


Not Premeditation But Grace

by shadesofbrixton



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Anxiety, Canon Compliant, Domestic Kink, First Time, Give Tom Hardy All the Dogs, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Trust Kink, post-Fischer job
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:29:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29783043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadesofbrixton/pseuds/shadesofbrixton
Summary: More than 10 years after the Fischer heist, Arthur has retired to a more sedate life. Eames comes looking for help with an unexpected job: himself.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 29
Kudos: 60





	Not Premeditation But Grace

**Author's Note:**

> This took me 23 months to write, on and off, so it feels very strange to be letting it out into the world. My main goal in this was to find a way to tell a story deeply post-canon, and I hope I’ve managed to pull that off and keep your interest. I have lived where Arthur lives, but his life was nothing like my life, and neither of our experiences are universal, so please forgive me if you’re from the region and find it lacking. 
> 
> The title is from C.K. Williams’ poem “This Happened,” which has been following me around in some form or another since college.

Arthur’s closest neighbor was a good five acres away, a friendly miniature on the westward horizon, but close enough to hear the dogs when the wind blew in the right direction. It was a still morning, and Arthur had awoken - not to the dogs, thankfully - to find a surprising late-spring snowfall dusting the low scrub outside his bedroom window. The dogs started up a few moments later, glorying in the fresh powder in a way that, Arthur imagined, involved a lot of dive-bombing and squirming with limbs in the air. 

The imagined visual put a smile on his face, as he went about the motions of waking up the rest of the house for the day. The wood stove was clean, and laid with fresh kindling - hadn’t it been in the 60s just yesterday? But this was what you got, with the high desert - and Arthur stooped to lay a match along the crumpled up newspaper and dryer lint. He waited until there was a satisfying lick of flame, shut the heavy metal door, and went to the kitchen for his French press.

Not too many years ago, the idea of stopping to do _anything_ before making his coffee would’ve made him scoff. But living in the desert had given him a small reprioritization: fire first, to drive out the cold. In the core of winter, keeping enough wood dry and inside, split and stacked, ready to feed the endless fire, became a major dictation of Arthur’s social life. Meals out couldn’t go too late; he needed to get home to feed the stove. Now, this close to proper spring, was a different matter. One good round of wood would heat the house for the day, once the sun was properly up to help from the outside. The adobe would hold the heat. 

Arthur was halfway through boiling water on his cooking stove - which was electric, and a whole separate contraption - when he realized the dogs were still audible. He frowned, slightly, and looked out his kitchen window, as though he could somehow span the flat terrain with his naked eye. Impossible, of course. But he was surprised to see a truck moving along the dirt road between his neighbor’s property and his own, windshield wipers visibly working to keep the snow off. Arthur’s frown deepened, and he considered the shotgun under the bed. 

But no, it was a Sunday morning, there was no need for that. The sun was up. Arthur moved his water off of the burner, poured over his grounds, and set an egg timer. The truck would surely pass by, anyway - they got tourists, now and then, renting out these properties for the novelty of it. The ski season didn’t end for another two weeks, and a late Spring Break could always bring Texans. 

The dogs were quieting down now, and Arthur imagined them outside in their run, snow melting on hot snouts as they surged in a pack. Half wolf, bragged Arthur’s neighbor, though he doubted it was true. Mesa dogs were mutts to the bone, and lacked several vital characteristics to wolves. Even diluted ones. 

The truck was slowing.

The sound of rubber on gravel was unmistakable; someone had pulled into his drive. Not enough snow yet to cover the stone. Arthur pulled on a sweater, stuffed his feet into boots, and opened his door, coming out onto his _portal_. Someone lost, likely - his vision of a waylaid Airbnb renter was solidifying with every moment. There were no numbers on the homes, and the closest PO box was at the turn-off for the county road. 

The car’s engine cut. Arthur put on an easy expression, and raised a hand in casual greeting, welcoming the lost traveler to ask for directions. The car door opened, and a familiar, though older, face peered around the frame, as the driver stood.

“Well aren’t you the welcome wagon,” Eames said, bracing one forearm on the door and one on the roof of the truck, standing on the step-up. His grin widened as Arthur’s diminished, and then he laughed. “Not who you were expecting?” the man asked merrily.

Arthur’s egg timer pinged. 

***

“The decent thing would’ve been to warn me,” Arthur said gravely, putting a cup of hot coffee in front of Eames. Who was sitting at his kitchen table, nose and ears red from the contrast of the cold outside to the heat of the room. 

“Well I _tried_ ,” Eames pressed, as Arthur added milk to his own coffee and frowned again. “I called twice, Arthur, it went straight to voicemail.” Eames had lines around his eyes, now. Arthur supposed he did too - as well as a little grey, but it was more visible, he figured, than in Eames’ short growth of beard. Time went on, he scolded himself. This did happen.

Arthur cast an accusatory glance at his phone, resting on the window sill above the sink, the only place where the cell signal successfully penetrated the adobe walls. “I have to go outside for signal,” he allowed. “I haven’t been to town since Friday. I meant more than 48 hours notice, Eames.” 

The other man clucked his tongue and sipped the coffee, and then made a pleased noise and inhaled deeply. Arthur watched a trickle of snowmelt come down his temple and disappear into his collar before it could drop to the table. 

“Would’ve saved me some trouble as well,” Eames reminded him. “Had to go bother your poor neighbor. You know he has _eleven_ dogs?” he added, far more delighted than bewildered, and Arthur didn’t bother to suppress his snort. 

“He’s a breeder,” Arthur said. “Sort of.”

“Well far be it from me to suss out his sexuality,” Eames said blithely. “All I knew was that you were in one of these space ships - “

“Earth ships,” Arthur cut in, but Eames waved off the correction.

“Dirt pods,” he settled on, “And that it looked mad, from the photo Ariadne sent me, so I had to stop and knock on doors.”

Arthur blew a breath out through his nose, drank his coffee, and turned that over in his head. “It’s fine,” he settled on. “I thought you were a lost tourist, so will everyone else.”

Eames was silent, regarding him with a slight tilt to his head. Arthur drank more of his coffee, put down his mug, and slotted his hands into the pockets of his flannel sleeping pants. “What,” he said. 

Eames shook his head, bottom lip pursed out. “Nothing. You’re just - ” He didn’t finish the sentence. 

Arthur let one corner of his mouth turn upward. “You too,” he said, and then turned toward the refrigerator. “I have slow oats, if you want? But you should tell me why you’re here, too.” 

***

Stillness was a trait that had come to Arthur gradually. 

Eames had seen him be motionless before, but it had always held a certain… rigidity, in their previous work together. Given the impression that, if stretched beyond its nature, some element within the man would snap without warning. Break off. If Eames had to be honest with himself - which he did try to be, really - it was a trait in which he’d taken a great deal of joy, by way of pushing Arthur’s buttons. 

And now here he was, living in a house made out of clay and garbage, in the literal middle of nowhere, somehow accustomed to stillness. Eames was tempted to blame it on the thin air.

He still had that frown, though. Eames stifled a grin into his coffee cup and listened to Arthur drum his fingers. Eye the dirty plates, which Eames could tell was just _killing_ him to not clear away immediately.

“I’m not seeing why it had to be here, though,” Arthur said, finally. “You could have steered your mark toward any number of healing centers, California is just… riddled with them.” 

“My my,” Eames said, leaning back, enjoying the moment. “Is that a hint of condescension I detect? Have you become a local, Arthur?” 

Arthur had the decency to laugh, and push his hair back out of his face - loose, longer on top, Eames wondered if he was overdue for a trim. Did he just pop over to the neighbor’s and borrow the dog shears whenever he needed fixing up on the sides? “I mean, I’d say so, but the families who have been here since before this was a _state_ tend to have opinions about that,” he said, wry. 

“Look,” Eames said, pitching himself forward again, and braced on his forearms. Arthur suppressed a twitch at the movement, Eames wondered if it was a defensive reflex or over-isolation. “I’m not going to be coy about it, I steered him here because I knew you were in the area, and it’s never a bad idea to have a bit of backup when you’re running a con solo.”

“Eames,” Arthur sighed out, and it evoked such a pang of abrupt nostalgia in Eames that he missed his opportunity to interrupt. “While that’s shockingly sensible of you, I don’t… do crime anymore.”

“Crime.” Eames grinned at him, echoing the word. “ _Crime_ , Arthur.” 

That easy laugh came again, and Arthur shook his head. Eames waved his hand in the air, as though shooing away a gnat. “Nevertheless,” he said. “I’m not asking you to put on a false mustache and go through the man’s pockets. Just - be accessible. Have my back, if things go south.” 

A grunt came out of Arthur as the man rolled his eyes. “Are you expecting them to go south?” he asked, a demanding edge to his voice.

“No!” Eames exclaimed, pressing a wounded hand to his chest.

Arthur scrutinized him sharply, and then moved their plates to the opposite end of the table. “I’ll be the judge of that. Lay out your details.” Eames gave a crow of victory, a contest he hadn’t even anticipated participating in, and immediately reached for the notebooks stashed in his traveling bag. 

***

Northern New Mexico was no stranger to its own kind of cons. The first year Arthur had moved to the area, a meth lab had exploded on the property adjacent to his - not the dog breeder, but in the other direction - and rendered that lot vacant and undesirable for the ensuing years. The town’s two pizza parlors sold cocaine out the backdoor. Someone was always scamming their way into a part of the ski resort they shouldn’t, or poaching on the National Park Service land that abutted the resort. 

There were low-level cons, too: people who sold jewelry in the town square that was allegedly “native made,” but really just recycled from the local trading post. Neighbors who inched their property lines outward over the years, trusting that their drifting fences wouldn’t be noticed. Joyful shoplifters at the Walmart in town. 

People liked to feel clever about their scams. They were easy to spot, but Arthur had made a habit of holding his tongue until he understood the stakes - which, admittedly, had taken some time. But Eames’ con made him frown, and he touched his fingertips to the map displayed on a tablet between them: topographical, with the year 1899 written at the bottom.

The con was this: someone at the state department was paying Eames to coax a man over the border from Texas, on the guise of needing spiritual refreshment after his divorce. Unlike Arthur’s standard idea of a cigar-chewing, Cadillac driving land baron, Eames’ mark was a man named Thomas Three Ravens.

Arthur hesitated over the name. “Is he native?” 

“ _God_ no,” Eames laughed out. “White as the day is long. He bestowed it upon himself in 1998, thought it was noble. Born Thomas Pennington.”

Arthur frowned, and Eames went on: there was knowledge of fraud surrounding Pennington’s actions, particularly when it came to water rights and the diversion of natural streams. But he had, thus far, managed to avoid the federal eye in his efforts. That was where Eames came in. 

“All I have to do is talk him into a little inappropriate land tampering, and catch it on video.” He rubbed the back of his neck, and Arthur watched for a moment as the man worked some kink out of his spine. Too many hours in the car, Arthur guessed. Possibly a plane before that, depending on how long he’d been on this case. 

“So you’re working for the government,” Arthur said, carefully pitching his voice somewhere between a question and a statement. 

Eames didn’t respond to that, tapping his finger down at the map, inadvertently causing some kind of zoom function on the tablet, which he swore at and reversed. “This land grant technically goes back to the Spanish royal family. If someone of the lineage came to claim the deed, we would _technically_ be obligated to forfeit property.” 

That seemed like a bizarre technicality for the U.S. Government to abide by. Arthur lifted an eyebrow, studying the man across the table from him. “And you’re going to… what, pretend to be a Spanish royal?” Arthur groped through his mind for the name of a single member of the Spanish royal family and came up blank. 

“No,” Eames said. “Well, yes. Well, Iñaki Urdangarin Liebaert. The king’s brother-in-law.”

“Oh, is that all.” 

“He’s from basque country,” Eames added, as if that explained everything. 

Arthur put his hand over his eyes. “Alright, get out,” he said, and dropped his hand back down to the table. Eames looked at him, bemused. “No, I’m serious,” Arthur said, pushing the tablet back toward Eames. “I need time to digest this, and I assume you have somewhere you’re staying, so get out and let me process for a day. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Eames’ expression transitioned into something more like consideration, as he scooped his items together and slid them into a bag. “Well I can’t very well _call_ , so where shall we find each other?” 

There were cobwebs in the _latillas_ again. Arthur only noticed because he was looking up, an eye-roll that got stuck halfway. “There’s a farmer’s market in the library parking lot. I’ll be there just before noon.” He needed groceries anyway, and to drop off some plans with the zoning commission. Eames looked like he wanted to say something to that, but Arthur raised an eyebrow at him, and Eames held his hands up in an innocent gesture, and stood up. 

“Tomorrow,” Eames said, and saw himself out.

Arthur exhaled. He wasn’t unhappy to see Eames, but there was an undeniable sensation of upset, of change, that he had to acclimate to. In like a lion, and with Eames in tow: here came spring.

***

Arthur found Eames milling through the crowd of white pop-up tents the following afternoon, paperwork filed and canvas bag full of groceries. He took a moment to watch Eames before he approached, wondering if he looked as out of place to everyone else as he did to Arthur. This was a town of inconsistencies, and tourists, and yet. And yet, Arthur had learned to categorize people, the same as everywhere else in the world. Eames appeared so obviously Other, but his own bias was clear from the lack of reaction on everyone else’s part. So Arthur watched as Eames lifted goat’s milk soap up to his face and sniffed, made pleasant chatter with the woman selling loose leaf tea, sampled posole out of a tiny paper cup.

Finally, feeling like enough of a creep, he cut through the crowd, and insinuated himself next to Eames like they’d only been momentarily separated.

“Oh hello,” Eames said smiling, and offered him a piece of bread with honey on it. Arthur declined, and Eames stuffed it into his own mouth, humming in delight, like he didn’t know how honey was supposed to taste. 

“You need to buy a hat,” was what he said instead, marking the progression of pink on Eames’ cheeks and neck. 

“I’ll be fine,” Eames said, steering them away from the row of booths. “Have you thought about my job?” 

Arthur shifted his bag over to his other hand, so he wouldn’t be bumping pork chops into Eames’s leg, and frowned. “You don’t have enough people,” he said by way of an answer.

He could feel Eames cut him a sideways look, as they paused for some light traffic at a crosswalk. “Are you offering to help me staff up? Also, where are we going?” 

“No,” Arthur said quickly, even stopped to look Eames in the eye as he said it. “Look, you’ve got one guy who needs to convince Pennington to come here, but you need somebody separate to intercept him, and maybe even a third to sell the water idea. They can’t all be the same person, it’s too obvious. Even better if none of them are connected at all. Two minimum, three ideally. The Spanish royal tie-in doesn’t even make sense. I know you’ve been out of things for a while, but it’s not like you to be sloppy, and it’s not like you to need me to…” he cast around for a word. “Proofread your work.” 

Eames looked at him long enough that Arthur could tell he sounded flustered when he added, “What.” 

“Nothing,” Eames said after a moment, dragging his gaze away, shifting his weight slightly. “Those are good ideas.” 

Arthur waited for more. They crossed the street. “That’s it?” he prompted, feeling a little on edge. He hadn’t been mean with his feedback, but he’d expected a little more indignation from Eames, or a retort, or - something. 

“I’ll have to find two more people,” Eames conceded. “You sure you won’t be one of them?”

“Yes,” Arthur confirmed quickly. “Eames, this is - look, I’m sorry, but this job sounds…” He cut himself off, flipping through adjectives for something adequate but not cruel. “Beneath you. I don’t know what your current situation is, if you need money or you’re just bored, but your specialty used to be _motive_. So you can understand if I’m not feeling it from you. Do you like donuts?”

“What?” Eames said, and then looked up at where they’d stopped, and laughed. “Yes, doesn’t everyone? Did you bring me for donuts, Arthur?” 

Arthur held the heavy wooden door open, and tipped his head so that Eames would go in first. “It’s an institution. And they’re good. If you’re only in town for a while, you should have some.”

They got in line at the counter, where Eames put his hands on his knees so that he could peer into the case, and Arthur stood with his hands in his pockets, eyeballing the specials board. 

Slowly, like the manual winding of a watch, something clicked into place. Arthur said: “There is no job.”

Eames didn’t move for a moment, but the air between them was suddenly a physical thing, every atom measurable. Then he straightened up next to Arthur, and they both gazed at the green of the chalkboard, and the hundreds of poorly erased layers of white dust behind today’s flavor: blue corn with lemon glaze. 

Arthur finally turned his head to look at him, and said it again, quieter, but still no pitch of a question, he was that certain. “There’s no job.” 

Eames stepped behind him and strode out of the restaurant. The shop girl prompted Arthur for his order in that moment, and he hesitated a beat before putting in his request, plus a coffee, and added the donuts to his bag. When he left the shop, Eames was nowhere to be seen.

***

Arthur made a wager with himself: he put the donuts in the freezer. He knew, from experience, that they’d defrost well and keep for about a week. Especially the glazed ones, they stayed moist and didn’t pick up any stale freezer taste. He’d tested. He liked donuts. 

He was not, he told himself, expecting Eames to come back. 

So he went about his days. He turned the cold earth in the raised planter beds outside his back door, trying to aerate the soil and loosen up anything that might have hibernated in there for the winter. Repainted the metal deck chairs in a splash of cherry red, good for watching the storms roll in over the mesa. Regraveled the front drive, which was the worst of all - work he could have used Eames’ help with, but grudgingly did it himself, like he always had. He only had one rake, anyway. No point in waiting for Eames.

On the third night, after sundown, Eames came back. No sound of a running car, a mystery that Arthur would have to solve in the morning, but nonetheless: Eames, standing at the front door, interrupting the buffer zone of Arthur’s greenhouse wall and his living space. He wore a jacket with a shearling collar that looked like real wool, and hunched his shoulders like it was cold. Arthur took the donuts out of the freezer and put them on the countertop. 

“Let’s talk,” he said, and grabbed a flashlight, and his own jacket, and led the way around the side of the house, toward the backward sprawl of shrub and darkness. The bobbing light led the way, and god, it was quiet out here. 

“This is ominous,” Eames said cheerfully, as they reached a space Arthur had cleared for a firepit, and Arthur leaned up against the woodbox. No fire tonight. He was still running wagers with himself, different stakes, shifting values. 

They stood in silence.

Eames paced around the fire pit after a moment, exploring the space: he put a foot on an uncut log, as wide-around as a hubcap, tried to move it by tipping. It wouldn’t budge. He toed the stone circle that kept the ashes in place. He sniffed and came back to the woodbox, leaning next to Arthur, but not near enough to accidentally touch.

It was wild, how fast it seemed like the moon could rise, when you had a mountain ridge to measure it by. 

In the distance, Arthur could hear his neighbor’s dogs, just barely, a kind of animal chatter that came and went.

“I’m not okay,” Eames said, and Arthur could feel the muscles in his own forehead clench, eyebrows trying to lift and forcibly stilled in the same breath. 

“Okay,” Arthur replied.

Eames huffed sharp on the end of the word. “No.” He dropped the syllable hard and then rubbed at his mouth, his cheek, with one broad hand. “What I’m trying to say is - Arthur. You know when people ask you how you are, and you just say… okay?” He shrugged, miming the blasé-ness of it all. “Fine? Getting by?”

Arthur gestured with one hand, conciliatory, feeling something creep into his chest. Something heavy, anxious. “Sure.” 

There was something a little wild in Eames’ tone when he went on. “I can’t remember the last time that was true. I want - I want that, I want to say I’m okay and mean it. But I’m not okay. I don’t know how to be okay, everything just keeps going on and on around me, and I know what I’m supposed to say, or how I’m meant to act, but I don’t - ”

“Eames,” Arthur said, voice level, cutting through the other man’s words. Eames stopped, and his breathing was audible, a little out of breath. Caught on the edge of a spiral that Arthur recognized all too well.

“Right,” Eames said briskly, and tipped his face up to the open sky, the breathtaking expanse of stars there. “Fuck,” he breathed out. “Right.”

Arthur pressed his lips together and looked out at the great expanse of shrub, eyes adjusted to the dark. The moon was waxing, and his eyes kept trying to find movement, some indicator that there was animal life out there. And there invariably was; whole biomes of snakes and mice and rabbits and hawks and coyote and a million kinds of bugs, all too small to register in the shadow, however unnaturally bright. Eames was not okay. That was a fact that his brain struggled against, something he wanted to debate. He wanted to ask: was anyone ever okay? He wanted to ask: haven’t you always been like this, though? But the severity of the moment kept him quiet, and thinking. Eames had come to him for this. Eames had come _here_. 

“It’s not financial,” Arthur guessed. Eames made an offended sound, and looked at him, but Arthur shook his head and met his gaze in the darkness. “That’s the biggest source of unnamable anxiety, for me. Money. I’m not accusing, I’m trying to do a checklist.”

The noise Eames made in response was practically subterranean, Arthur could feel it more than anything else. “It’s not money. It’s not emotional debts, or boredom. I don’t need a _purpose_ ,” he said, mouth twisting unhappily. 

“Then why make up a job?” Arthur asked. He’d had his theories, but most of them fell into an umbrella of things Eames had just dismissed.

A shrug, one that didn’t look very natural. “Familiar steps.”

“Hm,” Arthur said. It didn’t quite feel right, but none of this did.

“I didn’t know how to sincerely engage you without a job,” Eames said, and then added, “Fuck, fuck, I hate this conversation, Arthur,” and laughed bitterly at the end of it. Arthur huffed in sympathy, and pushed his thumb into the divot of the flashlight’s grip, for something to do. 

“You’re doing a good job, though.”

Eames groaned, like the cost wasn’t worth the praise, and like he wasn’t just playing it up for kicks. He was legitimately distraught, just on the side of unnerving. You thought you knew someone, but - no, Arthur didn’t really know anyone, anymore. Dossiers were different. 

“Panic attacks?” Arthur asked, almost as an afterthought. 

There was the sound of Eames shifting his weight, no more comfortable. “Once or twice,” he said. “But more it’s this - ” Eames stopped and pressed his hand into his own chest, and leaned forward, pushing into it. “This feeling, all the time.” 

“Catastrophe,” Arthur said. Eames looked at him again, nodding faster than Arthur expected. He pushed a hand through his hair, feeling it loose and dry in the high desert climate, spent a moment not missing humidity at all. And then he shifted around, used that same hand to press into Eames’ chest. Eames’ hand slipped away to make room for Arthur’s, and he lurched into the touch, like somehow feeling the pressure as a physical thing was easier, more identifiable. A bruise he could push. Arthur was projecting, probably.

“You’re okay,” Arthur said, and watched Eames’ brow furrow, his gaze sharpen. “No - sorry, you’re not okay. What I mean is, you’re safe. You can stay here. We’ll figure this out. You’re not in trouble, Eames.”

“Jesus,” Eames said, half miserable, half relieved. 

“Yeah?” Arthur said, eyebrows lifting, and pressed on Eames’ chest harder. “You’re not in trouble.” He could feel the man’s breathing slow slightly, that panic abating. 

Eames, bitter and amused, touched the back of his hand, and Arthur took that as a cue to lighten up. “I sound like a fucking abused child,” Eames griped.

“So?” Arthur said mildly, and patted Eames’ chest before retreating entirely. “We’ll figure it out,” he repeated. “After we sleep. Sleep first.” One of his mother’s rules, never go to bed upset. It had brought Arthur his own problems; trying to solve every problem with every person, never recognizing bad blood and bad seeds when they needed to be left alone. It had made Arthur a pleaser, a fixer. But sometimes it wasn’t wrong. 

Eames made a grumbling sound and rubbed his face again, but it was more brisk this time. Arthur was already making a list in his head, books to pull up from his research database, phone calls he wanted to make. Eames moved in the mostly-darkness, hefting himself up to navigate back toward the house. Arthur followed, silently, stepping in Eames’ footsteps as they picked their way back up the property line toward Arthur’s back gate. It wasn’t until they reached the cover of the _portal_ that Arthur paused, and Eames, sensing the change in pace, looked over his shoulder.

“Eames,” Arthur said.

Eames turned fully, posture loose, hands in his pockets.

“Did you come back because you thought I wouldn’t care, or because you thought I would?” he asked. There was no venom in it, but he needed to know where Eames was on this road, if he was going to help. Ten years ago, it would’ve been a different question. 

“I don’t know,” Eames said, in a tone that sounded a little adrift. But, then, more firmly: “I thought you would. You like… problems.” 

Arthur let a flit of a smile move across his face, and then started moving again, which prompted Eames through the door ahead of him. “Solving them,” he agreed. _But you aren’t one,_ he kept to himself. 

***

Eames woke on the sofa with one foot on the ground, knee bent and hip a little sore from being turned out. He could never seem to keep more than three limbs, at any given time, on the couch. Arthur frowned at him, most likely checking he was awake, and then dropped a shirt on his face. “Come on,” he said briskly. “Breakfast in the car. You’re coming with me today.”

Levering himself up on the scratchy cushions took a moment of work, and Eames squinted at the square of sunlight on the kitchen floor, judging its placement and deciding it was far too early to argue. The shirt - which had fallen down to his lap - was a plaid button-up, a thicker material than he was used to. Working one arm into it, he was also appalled to note that it was his size, even in the shoulders, and wondered what, exactly, Arthur was up to. 

Arthur, who looked far too put together and confident, ticking off some mental list as he filled two travel mugs and took a frying pan of eggs off the stove. Eames dragged yesterday’s dusty jeans on, smacked the taste of regret around in his mouth, and picked up one of the mugs. Arthur made good coffee. “Zat?” he asked, as Arthur spooned various substances onto a flour tortilla. Green chile, beans, potatoes. His industrious little worker ant. 

“Breakfast burritos. Easier for one handed eating.” Arthur’s attention was on him suddenly. “Work boots by the door should fit you. Go put them on.” 

Eames didn’t squint, but he wanted to. “Are you putting me on suicide watch,” he asked, voice a little too chipper, but went to go put on his shoes. Not before he caught an eye-roll, though.

“No,” Arthur said. “I’m giving you structure. What do you _like_ to do, anyway?”

“What, you mean besides gamble, forge, drink, and try to seduce divorcees with champagne problems?” Eames asked, finding the second-hand boots and sliding them on. They were well broken in, which felt a little odd, not shaped to his feet. He’d had worse, though, and tied them up tight.

“Shake those out for spiders next time,” Arthur said around a mouth of burrito, and shoved Eames’s coffee and food into his hands. Eames made a horrified face, and when Arthur didn’t laugh, it deepened. 

They worked their way out to Arthur’s truck, the doors heavy in a way that felt old, as Eames swung himself up into the passenger side. Once they were out on the washboard road, Arthur started up again. “I mean leisure time,” he clarified, settling his sunglasses onto his face. “I mean when you’re not performing.” 

Eames looked at him for a long moment, trying to ferret out any heat in the words. There didn’t seem to be any. His arm was warm, against the passenger side window. The shirt smelled like the sheets Arthur had given him to throw over the sofa, which was to say like dye-free, fragrance-free detergent, which was to say, like cotton. His teeth vibrated in his head, going over the dirt road, until they reached the county highway and things evened out. There was nothing out there to save him conversationally, not even a damned cow to moo at. 

“I thought this would be worse,” Eames said, instead of answering the question. Arthur verbalized a question mark. “The morning after,” Eames clarified. “Talking about it.” 

“Talking always helps,” Arthur said, like it was written in stone on a tablet somewhere. 

“Ugh,” Eames said. He shoved the burrito into his mouth and looked out over the rolling shrub, ignoring Arthur until they landed in a half built neighborhood. There were poles for street signs, but no names.

“What is it we’re - doing out here, exactly?” Eames asked, hazarding a look around the dusty, unpaved neighborhood. Arthur was squinting under the brim of - and Eames had to remind himself that he was definitely awake - a very sedate baseball cap, and considering a gently sloped shape sticking out of the earth a few hundred yards away. 

“Checking a raincatch,” Arthur responded, and started walking away from him. Eames wasn’t an idiot - he knew what a raincatch was - but he wasn’t entirely clear why Arthur was responsible for one. 

“I’m afraid you’ll need to be a bit more direct.” Eames followed him down the gravel path, wondering who made the decisions about where pavement ended and dirt began in this part of town. The scrub was low on either side of the road, and Eames fought the urge to walk off the path and directly toward the house, if that was there they were headed. A likelihood of snakes stayed his impulse.

Arthur paused a moment to consider a passing cloud, and then seemed to come to some resolution. “I’ve been helping build Earthships out here for the past few years. Recycled homes, off the grid. They’re supposed to be carbon neutral.” 

“What,” Eames said, “like those things on the internet where the walls are made out of plastic soda bottles?”

“Sure,” Arthur said. “That, or glass, or milk gallon jugs, or whatever - you can make them out of a lot of things, as long as you know how to insulate. But I mostly look at the greywater system and the solar panel set-up.” He caught Eames’ expression and bristled. “It’s _fascinating_ ,” he protested. “You know you can use every gallon of water four different ways before it ends up in a septic tank? That’s valuable, in the desert.” 

“Hm,” said Eames, as they drew up to the house. Arthur found a small lockbox by the door which housed a key to a shed, and then withdrew a ladder from the shed in an almost comedic, clown-car style extraction. He propped the ladder against the curving roof of the house, and started to climb up. Halfway, he stopped and looked down at Eames. 

“Well?” Arthur demanded, making eye contact. For just a moment. Then he turned his face back upward and climbed the rest of the way to the roof.

In for a penny, Eames thought, and followed him up. 

Once they were up there, the unfiltered sunlight made Eames squint. The ballcap was starting to seem awfully wise. He turned in a slow circle and looked at the horizon: a good 270-degrees of the sky were edged by mountain ranges, though they appeared to belong to different sets. Off in one direction, he could see grey streaks that meant rain, but far off. It was raining somewhere. Just not _there_. It felt like a dreamscape, that awareness.

Arthur was on his knees, elbow-deep in a wide gutter, frowning. The slope of the roof felt less dramatic once Eames was actually up on it, which he was sure Arthur would have some commentary on involving horizon-lines. Still, Eames felt out of sorts so far up in the air. On the other side of the neighborhood, an unleashed dog bounded around a child, feathered tail whipping. 

“Ah,” Arthur said, extracting a clot of sludge from the trough. He tossed it over the edge, and then stuck his arm back in, pulling out a second, smaller fistful. “That should do it.”

“You’re a glorified groundskeeper,” Eames said, admiringly. 

“Yeah,” Arthur agreed, and Eames wondered, again, if it was just proximity to Cobb that had made Arthur so easily offended before. Or maybe living in the dust had a way of whittling down one’s sense of honor. “It’s great compared to what you’ll be doing, if you don’t tell me what you like.” 

Eames pushed his tongue up against the roof of his mouth. Arthur shook off the damp from his hand and headed back toward the ladder, easing his way back down the side of the house. Eames followed, surreptitiously watching Arthur for the technique - he didn’t want to fall, and it wasn’t every day he had the occasion to get on a roof via an unanchored ladder. 

Back on the ground in one piece, he said, “I like to garden.”

Arthur looked at him, and then took off his sunglasses and looked at him again. Eames half expected Arthur to accuse him of bullshit. Finally, he said, “You can’t garden here. Not easily. You’ll hate it.”

“Then let me hate it,” Eames said, and shrugged.

Arthur gave him another long look, and then put his sunglasses on. “Alright. Today, though, I need help with something else. Have you ever used a pick before?” 

Eames’ brain took a moment to catch up. “A pick _axe_?” he asked, but Arthur was already walking to the shed from which he’d extracted the ladder, pulling one out, plus a shovel. “Are we burying bodies in frozen ground?” he demanded.

“Better,” Arthur promised. “We’re going to dig drainage.” 

***

Arthur made Eames ride around with him while they priced solar panelling with three different contractors in town. The day after that, Eames disappeared for a few hours and came back with a car, a few bags, and, inexplicably, a milk crate full of vegetables. On the third day, Arthur woke up early and pulled his wheelbarrow out of his own storage shed, crusted with paint and dried concrete mix. (So, well, concrete.) He dug out half of the raised planter beds, making a pile of dirt off to the side when the wheelbarrow filled up, and then stuck the shovel down into the dirt, and set off across the long expanse of juniper that separated him from his neighbor. 

It was going to be a hot day, maybe one of the first real blazers of the season. Since the spring winds had died down, and they hadn’t had any precipitation since - the day Eames showed up, Arthur realized - there was dust in the air, just hanging. Arthur knew he’d settled in the right neighborhood when his first conversation at the bar had been about how many days since it had been since it had last rained. Water wasn’t just small talk around here, it was Whole Conversation. His neighbor wasn’t particularly social, which suited Arthur just fine - they shared necessities when it was neighborly. Showers, when the plumbing went out and the dogs needed clean water. Candles, when a DSL installer took out Arthur’s power. In the wilderness, you had to have your neighbor’s back - it was just intelligent living.

Borrowing some supplies took about an hour, a cup of coffee, and a tour through the new dogs - two of which followed him back across the shrub when he headed home. Eames was behind the house, watching him come, a hand up to his eyes to shield the sun. One of the dogs, a yellow lab mutt, bounded ahead of him to sniff all over Eames.

“Well this looks terribly exciting,” Eames decided, and Arthur hefted the coil of rubber he was carrying. 

“You’re going to install drip irrigation,” Arthur said, and smiled when Eames laughed.

“Just like that?”

“I’m going to teach you,” Arthur said, smacking the rubber against his chest. Eames’ hands lifted to hold it, and Arthur went around him to the shed, disappearing into its depths. The second dog followed him in, shoving its nose into the corners of the little building until Arthur clucked at it, mildly concerned about venomous things that liked to live in dark, dry corners. 

“What’s this?” Eames said, suddenly in the doorway, and then: “Oh, hello.” He stepped up into the little space next to Arthur, and Arthur could smell dirt, and raw lumber, and rubber, and Eames. “What’s all this,” he said again, peering. Curious Eames was charming, Arthur had to admit. When he was curious about something Arthur was invested in, anyway.

Arthur took a step to the side and finished rummaging through the little containers on the work table, until he found the playing-card deck stack of packets. “Seeds,” he clarified, and spread them out on the table in front of Eames. A dozen varieties in bright, happy colors. Eames picked up a packet that displayed a proliferation of jalapeno peppers on the front and peered at them. 

“I’d thought starters,” Eames said, lifting the flap on the little envelope and peering inside.

“The metaphor is better this way,” Arthur said, and Eames snorted in surprised amusement. Or at least, Arthur hoped it was surprised. Eames shot him a wry look, and Arthur patted him on the shoulder. “This is what grows here. If there’s anything else, we can go to the hardware store. Corn works against the house, too. And I have a cherry tree.”

“Really!” Eames said, looking up from his perusal at that. 

“Tart cherries,” Arthur clarified. 

“Naturally. Just like you.”

“Better for wine,” Arthur concluded. “You’re the one who said you wanted this.”

Eames let out a dramatic sigh, and scooped up all of the packets. “I do,” he said mournfully. “Alright, teach me how to irrigate.” 

Arthur spent another few moments in the shed, gathering hand tools and listening to Eames talk to the dogs outside, and realized he had a small smile on his face. He tried to straighten it down, but as soon as he stepped out into the sun, and saw Eames playing tug-of-war with a stick (the second dog was supervising by leaping around them and barking), it came back.

A sharp whistle came across the horizon. The dogs both perked up, and scampered back toward their home. Arthur raised his arm in gratitude to his neighbor, and Eames went, “Huh!” in that kind of offended, old-lady way he did, from time to time.

“They’ll be back,” Arthur promised. “Hold onto that stick, we can use it for poking seed holes.”

“Before coffee?” Eames protested, but went over to the raised beds to examine the space nonetheless. 

***

A week later, seeds were in the ground, drip irrigation was laid, and Eames had learned more than he wanted to about the growth cycles of squash in northern New Mexico. He’d also dealt with and (mostly) recovered from his first bad sunburn, bought a hat, and learned to actually put on sunscreen before he went outdoors. Mostly. He was more thoughtful about covering his tattoos; Arthur still had to yell at him to get the back of his neck and his nose.

They’d picked up some odd vegetables from a farm stand for dinner, and Eames had a tablet propped up in the kitchen, trying to learn how to peel a whole jicama to make some kind of slaw or salad. Arthur had excused himself, for what Eames had assumed was a shower - they were constantly rinsing construction dirt off. Except, after about twenty minutes, Arthur still hadn’t come back. 

Eames had managed to peel the damned turnip, and started to julienne it into tiny matchsticks, and was trying to find the rice vinegar, when he realized he could just make out voices. Two of them, which was disconcerting. He slipped his way down Arthur’s hallway, more curious than cautious. Arthur was in his bedroom, sitting at a small desk, with his laptop open. Eames eased the door open without knocking, something in the back of his brain registering familiarity at the sound of the person on the other end.

Something must have tipped Arthur off that he was there - maybe just the change of air pressure in the room - but when the other man twisted around and saw him, he waved Eames forward. “I have a monthly check-in with Ariadne,” Arthur said, leaning back from his laptop, gesturing at the screen. 

“Why didn’t you say?” was Eames’ first demand, a strange mix of hurt at being left out and confusion over this spectre from their past. 

“Who is that?” Ariadne demanded, so Eames stepped forward, the light balance on the camera auto-shifting until his face snapped into focus in the little thumbnail in the corner of their feed. There was a beat of silence until, presumably, Ariadne placed him in the out-of-context setting. “Eames!” she exclaimed. 

“Hello,” he said politely, but found himself smiling, almost despite himself. It was an unexpected pleasantness, to see her. “Arthur’s taking care of me for a bit.”

Eames watched in the little thumbnail as Arthur’s expression furrowed, and he looked at Eames, so Eames looked down at him. “Aren’t you.”

“I - yes,” Arthur admitted, and then looked at Ariadne. “I know you’d planned on swinging by in June,” he started, and Ariadne was smiling, shaking her head. 

“Don’t even think about it,” she said. “I want to see you both.”

Eames was - surprised, somehow. The Fischer job had been a milestone event, to be certain, and he’d kept track of Ariadne’s progress afterward, the same as he’d kept an eye on the entire crew. For safety. And for work, with some of them. He and Yusuf had worked together before, and they did again, after. 

“I didn’t realize I’d made such an impression,” Eames said smoothly, and then yelped as Arthur twisted his ear. “Ow, ow, why!”

“Don’t start with that,” Arthur said mildly, and then let go. Eames straightened up to clutch at his offended cartilage, mouth agape.

“Anyway,” Ariadne said, like none of it had happened, like Arthur hadn’t just _assaulted_ him, Arthur, who had just eclipsed 40, if Eames recalled correctly, and ought to act a little more mature, or at least more mature than Eames. “I’ll see you in a few weeks. Try not to kill each other until then.”

Arthur jumped in: “Remember the - ”

“Yeah yeah, the Vernors,” Ariadne assured him, waving her hand. “Bye, Eames.”

“Save me!” he cried out, and Arthur laughed and shut down the call, before turning on him and giving his hip a shove. Eames backed up, still rubbing his ear, and Arthur rolled his eyes.

“Don’t pout,” he said, shooing Eames back into the kitchen. He followed, though, which Eames appreciated, in a way he couldn’t articulate.

“I didn’t know you were still in touch,” Eames said instead, picking up the knife at the cutting board and regarding the half-hewn jicama. 

Arthur had pulled open the fridge, but paused to consider him for a long moment. And then he said, “I liked her. I wanted her to be better than Cobb.” He pulled a wrapped packet of meat out of the fridge. “She is.” 

“That’s not hard,” Eames said wryly, and his chest went warm when Arthur laughed. 

“She’s good,” Arthur clarified. “She’s smart. I ran point for her a few times. No ego, she chooses smart jobs, no baggage.” 

“Revolutionary.” Eames frowned, and then rubbed at his chest. Underneath the surprise at Ariadne, the delight in Arthur’s amusement, was something uncomfortable. 

Arthur’s body went still, watching him. Eames put the knife down. Their eyes met, and then Eames looked away. “What’s up,” Arthur said, no question mark, Eames could hear it. He was crossing the space, came next to Eames and stood there, his back to the counter, leaning next to Eames, who pressed his hips against the edge. 

“Dunno - snuck up on me,” he admitted, furrowing his brow, and glanced around the darkened living room on the edge of the kitchen’s light, like he could see something out there. “You have - relationships, friends, people.” 

“Sure,” Arthur said, and then seemed to want to say more. “We’ve always had networks. That’s part of the work.”

“Even after you got _out_ of the work.”

“I’m actually really good with people,” Arthur said, one corner of his mouth tipping up. “Maybe you just never noticed because I’m not good with _you_.”

The thing was, Eames _had_ noticed.

He’d noticed the way Arthur could take people in, study them, understand them. He knew how to speak to different people, knew how to have a serious chat with Saito and pay Ariadne the respect and attention she needed at that age, to develop into someone who _wanted_ to be respected and paid attention to. He knew how to deal with Cobb and get work done, hell, he’d gotten a read on Eames right away. None of this was news. But it had always been part of the job, and this wasn’t that.

“I think,” Eames said after a moment, “You’re better at this than me.” 

Arthur straightened up to put a hand between Eames’ shoulder blades, and rubbed a small circle there. “Better at what?”

Eames blew out a breath, startled by the touch. “Life.” 

The little circles continued, and Arthur looked at his face. “Hard disagree. But you’re going through some shit, so I won’t pick it apart. Don’t slip into that sleazy con man act with her, okay. I like how you’ve been with me, these past few weeks.”

Eames was tempted to ask Arthur if he was upset by the idea of Eames flirting. He wanted Arthur to say no, because he knew it wasn’t actually flirtation. He wanted Arthur to say yes, because jealousy was intoxicating, and a good plaster. They were both wrong, so he didn’t ask. Instead, he said, “Okay,” and looked down at his hands on the counter, and the black marble between them. “You are taking care of me.”

Arthur’s hand paused, but didn’t leave entirely. “Am I?” he asked. “I don’t actually know what I’m doing. I don’t know what you need, Eames. We’re just filling time.”

He blew out another breath, more controlled. “I think, actually, that might be what I need.” 

Arthur was so close, just right there, facing the right way for Eames to drop his lips to the man’s cheek and leave a kiss there, right next to that serious mouth. He wanted to do it, an urge for innocent, demonstrative affection, so different for both of them, and Arthur wasn’t moving. Instead, Eames picked up the knife, and cleared his throat. Arthur removed his hand, and Eames forced himself not to whine.

“What I mean - I like that you’ve been honest. Not that you have to act a certain way.”

Eames nodded, and felt a vague wave of appreciation for the phrasing. “This is a lot of work for you, isn’t it,” he said, not quite a question.

But Arthur contradicted him anyway. “No,” he said. “It’s not. Let’s - it’s hard for me to remember that I don’t know who you are, that I’m missing a lot of information from the past few years. But that’s a two way street.”

“Yeah,” Eames said, eyebrows lifted. “Dear Arthur, that might be the most polite ‘don’t act like you know me’ I’ve ever heard.” 

Arthur didn’t laugh, but his eyes crinkled at the corners. “You do know me, though. Some. You alright?” he asked, trying to study Eames’ face.

Eames felt something in him settle, even with a dozen unanswered questions. “I will be. Eating will help.”

Arthur’s mouth flattened and then released, and he gave a sharp nod. The small smile was back. “Eating we can do.” 

***

Since Eames had started his garden, Arthur didn’t always insist on his company at various job sites. And Eames had been a real trooper the day before, coming with him to a Habitat for Humanity project to help finish landscaping in the front, learning the real torment of having to level a yard to prevent water puddling after a rain, or seeping toward the house instead of away from it. So much of Arthur’s construction contribution was water based, it was hard not to make assessments when he drove through town: this one had a crumbling foundation because of improper plumbing, that one was close to a hidden _acequia_ , that one had cut off water rights from their next door neighbor and there was a fight brewing.

As a reward for spending the day on his knees with a level and raking gravel around in circles, Arthur had left Eames asleep on the sofa and headed toward the college’s extension campus on the south end of town. He spent the morning teaching a class of metalworkers how to weld casing for solar panels without frying the connections, and wandered through the art wing at lunch. His eyes were drawn to a perspective exercise, a series of penrose tribars and other Escher-inspired impossible objects spread out around one classroom door. They weren’t all particularly good; most likely an introductory class, but a few had straight lines and clever thinking.

Arthur sat down on the bench next to the wall, so that he could put his back to it, and not look at the dizzying illustrations and their pencil smudges. He peeled the reusable cloth wrapping off of his sandwich and ate it in careful bites, tucking all the crumbs back into the envelope and returning it to his briefcase when he was done. 

There were skylights in the building, at numerous angles, designed to let in strategic shafts of light as necessary. Arthur had noticed it as a pattern in multiple art campuses across the southwest; taking advantage of the natural light even when it had a propensity to blow out color and bleach archival work. But to hell with it, a rebellious corner of his mind thought. Better to have real light for an hour than something perfectly lit all day long. 

After lunch, Arthur’s back hurt a little, and getting back into his truck to leave the campus made him grunt. He ticked off a list in his head: to the nursery for sapling trees for Habitat, then the gym for an hour, then up to the community garden to find out about the next community picnic. His phone went off, and his first thought was Eames, Eames couldn’t find something in his kitchen, Eames had kidnapped his neighbor’s dog. 

It was the property manager for the earthship community where they’d dug drainage. 

Arthur blew out a breath, tried to settle the restlessness in his stomach, and pushed his car into gear, pushed his brain into gear, away from Eames’ broad shoulders and ridiculous farmer’s tan. 

When Arthur got back to the house, he had done exactly one of the things he planned on - purchasing trees with the Habitat family, who wanted little fruit saplings and one pretty one with red, maple-shaped leaves that somehow wasn’t a maple. Arthur had wished Eames had been there, and not just to carry the 10-gallon buckets of water to soak the earth, which somehow weighed six-hundred pounds on their way back from the spigot at the next-door property. Arthur’s grip hurt. His arms burned. 

Eames was sitting on the _portal_ , with the yellow dog from the neighbor’s house. Eames had the good grace to look guilty when the dog stood up to greet Arthur with a bark, and Arthur rubbed it between the ears as he levered himself out of the car. 

“Miss me?” Eames said immediately, offering his own beer up to Arthur as he walked by.

“Yeah,” Arthur said, and then his eyebrows went up belatedly, and he took a swallow of Tecate to mask it. Eames seemed equally thrown by the response, and Arthur cut in as he was drawing breath to speak again. “Does your back hurt? Because mine is killing me.” 

Eames could see the pivot happen, from Eames’ open mouth to say something about being missed, to calculating his own aches. “I nicked a bit of your ibuprofen,” he admitted. “It’s alright, just getting used to the work.” 

Arthur shook his head, pushed the beer back at Eames, and said, “Meet me at the truck in 15 minutes.” 

By the time he gathered his shorts, stuffed some water bottles and sandwiches into a cooler, and found a camping light, he could sense Eames’ vibration from outside the damn house. The dog was gone, Eames was leaning against the truck with his face turned up, a t-shirt with holes at the shoulder seam giving Arthur more throat than he really wanted to deal with in that moment. 

Arthur threw a bag and the cooler into the back of the truck, and they took off down the road. The sun setting had taken the heat of the day with it, and the air that slipped in through the window was enough to raise the hair on his arms. 

“Please tell me we’re not going to climb more roofs in the _dark_ ,” Eames said, sounding just enough like he believed it was a possibility that Arthur laughed. 

“That’s probably against OSHA or something,” Arthur said. “We’re going to a hot spring.” He wasn’t _trying_ to be mysterious, it just happened, sometimes. With Eames, it was a habit: you either over-explained yourself, and were prepared for every possible argument, or you just didn’t tell him until it was already happening. When they’d worked together, safety required that Arthur hedge toward excessive, painfully thorough communication. 

“Swimming in the dark in nature with wildcats,” Eames said, though he didn’t sound too put out about it. “Sounds much safer.”

Arthur snorted, and turned down another dirt road, much more washboard-textured than his own. “Stop reading the safety pamphlets at town hall.” 

“They’re educational,” Eames said primly. “They tell me more about the natural habitat than you do. Did you know we have garden snakes?” 

Arthur paused, first at ‘we,’ and then at the information itself. “Even in the raised beds?” 

“Yes, and it’s wonderful, and Lemon is smart enough to avoid them.”

“Who,” asked Arthur, “Is Lemon.” But as soon as he said it, he knew it was the neighbor’s dog, the yellow one, and said, “Oh, no.” 

***

Eames tried not to feel a little like a 1950s housewife, so excited to have a chance to chat with Arthur after a day of isolation. But he wasn’t isolated at all: he went to the library and checked out a book, chatted with the librarians. Had lunch at the little egyptian place across the parking lot, chatted with the staff there. Went around to the community garden, maybe thinking that Arthur might show up there, maybe just curious about what they were growing and how, chatted with the gardener. 

Still, Arthur was a different kind of conversation, funny and challenging and genuinely interested, but somehow easier all in one. It was a breath of relief, getting to talk to Arthur. It wasn’t _work_.

When he stopped the truck, it was in a circle of dirt, and Eames didn’t realize they were on the edge of a cliff until Arthur cut the headlights. Their eyes adjusted, and Arthur lead the way down a switch-back trail, fifteen minutes of concentrating on walking until Eames could hear the sound of rushing water and smell vegetation. 

Eames carried the cooler, amazed at just how much they could see around them. The moon wasn’t even fully full, and the world was cast in shadows of blue and deeper blue, black and grey and every color in between. Arthur’s hair was lost into an inky pool, and yet their footsteps were perfectly visible, vibrant starlight reflecting the almost white color of rock and dirt beneath their feet. 

And then: “Voila,” Arthur said, spreading his arms toward the pool. On the far side of it, there were two tents pitched, and a small fire circle. Someone raised their arm in recognition, and Arthur raised his back, a code Eames was beginning to understand from their drives on too-narrow roads or walks on trails: I see you, I know you see me, we see each other. 

“But it’s just,” Eames said. “Here?” It seemed too easy, nothing like the hot springs he’d seen in Japan, or Iceland. 

“It’s a Tuesday,” Arthur said, like that explained everything, pulling his shirt off. “In May.” Eames filed that information away for later use, and bent to unlace his shoes. Arthur set up their things along the rocky edge of the spring, squirmed out of his boots and pants, and waded into the water in his boxers. 

“Full disclosure,” Arthur said from the darkness, as Eames eased himself into the sulphur. “Most people who visit this one come nude. Just, you know, in case anyone else shows up.” 

Eames laughed, and felt he was being too loud, too close to those campers. “Are we breaking etiquette?” 

“No.” Arthur sank down until his shoulders were covered, and grumbled a pleased sound. “You won’t get, like, bullied for it. Just, you know. A lot of natural bodies around here.” 

Eames submerged himself, spreading his legs out in front of him, thinking too long about whether Arthur usually came naked. Were they underpants-based swimming just for his sake? Was Arthur shy? He searched his mind for any swimming jobs they’d ever worked together, and could remember nothing except an incident involving him having to wear a speedo when he forged an olympic relay swimmer, and the comments it had inspired from the rest of their crew, and the silence from Arthur, but that hadn’t even been his own _body_ , so it had been filed away under Arthur Takes His Job Too Seriously and nothing else.

The stars were bright, now that his eyes had adjusted. Eames could make out the shapes of other cliff faces and mountains and hills, quite close by. He could see the trail they’d come down, and water on Arthur’s face. “No wonder old men do this all the time,” he complained, trying to lay flat on his back, and there wasn’t quite enough room for it. Arthur shifted over slightly, and Eames could float, and wondered if it would help, or just make his muscles more tired.

“It’s sulphur,” Arthur said needlessly, because the smell was quite, well, obvious. Eames almost thought he sounded apologetic for it. 

“Mm,” Eames said, and closed his eyes. When he opened them, Arthur was watching. “Don’t let me drown,” Eames said.

“I won’t,” said Arthur, and didn’t look away. 

***

Eames had taken a shine to the Habitat for Humanity projects more than Arthur had realized, because they were getting ready for work together one day before Arthur realized he didn’t even know where Eames was going. When he’d mentioned his plans for the day, Eames had grinned and said, “I know, I already signed up,” and that had been that.

They were working on a different house, one that was mostly done inside but without the fixtures, and needed to be painted. Paint was another thing Arthur had to adjust to in New Mexico: because the air was so much drier, it could dry on the roller or in the tray while you were trying to get to the wall, practically. The texture would change fast, as the paint became tacky and it was put on. So the more people you had, the faster you could work, the better.

Eames was valuable with a roller, particularly on the ceilings, and Arthur had no urge to fight him for the honor. They’d taken over a master bedroom together, Arthur cutting in with quick brush strokes around window frames and trim, and Eames following behind with his broader swathes, before the full timeline of their tasks occurred to Arthur all in one swoop. 

“We’re building houses out of order,” he said, and Eames laughed, his voice a little distorted from the way he was constantly looking up to track his brush. 

“Another one of your metaphors,” Eames guessed, even though it was the exact opposite of the grown-from-seeds ideology he’d been presented with. But it was true, Arthur supposed, and also unavoidable: partnering with Habitat meant working on whatever they needed that day. The weekend before, Eames had cut and measured drywall; next week they needed all hands to work on framing an entirely new home. There was no order, and yet the sense of progress was undeniable. 

They fell into the rhythm of their work - Eames apparently not requiring an explicit confirmation from Arthur to know that he was right - and it wasn’t until they paused to survey for uneven spots that Eames surprised him with another question.

“Why haven’t you built a place of your own?” he asked, wiping wet paint off of his hands with a rag before it could set and dry. 

Arthur frowned in consideration, tapping the lid onto their bucket of paint so they could carry it into whatever room needed their attention next. “How do you know I didn’t build my place?” he asked.

Eames clucked a scolding sound at him. “It looks older than the places we’ve been working on. It’s what, maybe twenty years old? And there’s too many... compromises.” He hefted the ladder without folding it, and followed Arthur into the hallway, where Arthur opened up a broad closet that could ostensibly disguise any number of sins, or perhaps just a matching washer-dryer set. 

And Arthur was surprised to admit that that was true, as he spread their drop cloth and arranged their paint again. “I wouldn’t have minded a guest bedroom,” he mentioned, stirring the paint with a well-used wooden paddle, only realizing that Eames had gone still next to him after a moment. 

“Stop,” Arthur said, not unkindly, and looked up at him from the floor, resting an elbow on one of his knees. “I just mean it would be nice for you to have a place to be.”

“I’m perfectly settled,” Eames insisted, but it did seem to loosen his limbs. 

“Anyway,” Arthur said, and paused to pour more paint into the brush tray. “Maybe I will, someday.” And on a whim, like an idiot, he added, “Would you help me, if I did?” and then wished he could take it back.

Eames considered the question seriously, though, rolling his brush in contemplative strokes across the tray. “Of course,” he decided, but Arthur had heard the space of Eames actually thinking about it, and wondered about that even more.

***

There were suggestions of plants in the garden now, green explosions of leaves thrusting themselves up out of the soil in some way that shouldn’t be amazing. Eames felt comfortable there: the predictability of gardening, even in a new climate, was comfortable in a way he hadn’t expected. You watered plants, or watered them too much, and certain things happened. You trimmed them, or crowded them, or split the seedlings, and in general, had control of the outcome. 

Arthur had started out laughing at him, a bit, for his habit of talking loudly to Lemon before he began working in the dirt. It was to warn the snakes, but surely that was also for everyone’s own good. He liked having someone to talk to, and Lemon was a good listener, and would occasionally put her entire face on the raised planter, resting it there like a heavy burden. 

But after he’d finished turning the earth that evening, and surveilled leaves for any pests, and given the whole thing a good soaking, Arthur had caught him. “Wash your hands,” he said, laying out a few items on the kitchen table, and they left the front door open to let in the warm, late-spring air.

“No mosquitos,” Eames mentioned, more of an observation than a question, when he came back. 

Arthur hummed, like he was proud that Eames had noticed, which was absolutely absurd, but Eames took it as a win anyway. “Rarely. They get really bad on land with acequias though. Plus, there’s tarantulas, so.” He nodded toward the screen door, as though that explained the necessity of it, while Eames shot a nervous glance at Lemon, who was lounging on the warm concrete of the porch slab.

“She’ll be fine,” Arthur said, voice tolerant, and Eames wondered how he’d even known without looking up. “Come over here and let me see your hands.” 

Eames frowned in consideration, looking at the backs of his spread fingers, and settled at the kitchen table. He laid his hands out for Arthur, who gave him a hard look. “You have to let me know if they get like this again. _Before_ they get like this,” he said, picking up one of Eames’ hands.

“I didn’t realize you were so accustomed to my soft touch,” Eames joked, and Arthur gave him an _in no mood_ expression, before picking up a white tube and popping the cap with his thumb. 

“I’m serious,” Arthur said, and Eames interjected, “Yes, I can see that,” before Arthur’s condemning expression cracked into an eye roll.

“It’s just a lot drier out here,” Arthur said, and squeezed a line of gel out onto the back of Eames’ hand. “”If you let it go like this, your skin will actually crack and bleed.” He worked with his thumbs, from Eames’ knuckles back toward his wrist, in slow circles. Eames would be the worst kind of liar if he’d said he didn’t enjoy it, but there was enough alarm in the warning to make him lift his eyebrows.

“So - _not_ aesthetic, then,” he summarized, and Arthur gave him a good-natured huff. “Alright,” he added, conciliatory. 

Honestly, he hadn’t noticed that his hands had gotten quite so rough. He was enjoying working with them, and after a few hissing blisters from holding a hammer incorrectly, he’d mostly just been focused on protecting his palms and his grip, not the opposite surface. And with the garden, getting his hands into the actual dirt was the most productive way to measure what the plants needed. 

He sat patiently while Arthur finished one hand, and then repeated the job on the other, not seeing the need to point out that he could have easily done this himself, if Arthur had simply left him the tube and told him what to do.

“This will help rehydrate the skin,” Arthur explained, deeply redundant, and it occurred to Eames rather abruptly that Arthur might be a little uncomfortable, doing this for him.

“Arthur,” Eames said gently, and the man’s gaze skittered up to him, his hands pausing on Eames’ only for a moment, before those determined strokes picked up again. “Thank you,” he settled on, and one corner of Arthur’s mouth ticked up. 

“Sure,” Arthur said, and then patted his hands. “One more thing.” He lifted up two small folds of fabric from his lap, and laid them on the table, choosing one and rucking it up. 

“Are those your socks,” Eames asked, vaguely horrified by the intimacy of it all, as Arthur worked one of them onto his hands. 

“Yes,” Arthur said, smoothing the wrinkles out, and situating the fabric past his wrist. “And you’re going to wear these while you sleep tonight. And you’re not going to complain about it.” 

“Who said anything about complaining,” Eames said, and held his other hand up helpfully, while Arthur effectively rendered him useless for the rest of the evening. There was no point in putting up a fuss; it wasn’t the first time, and it likely wouldn’t be the last. 

***

It was a few nights later, out at the fire pit, when Arthur realized this seemed to be the place where Eames felt the most comfortable having what he would classify as _precarious_ conversations. They’d been talking about Dom and Mal, one of the safer topics of their past due to their mutual affection for Malorie. 

“Okay, but,” Arthur said. “Tell me one couple in dream sharing who stayed together. No chemists.”

“Oh that’s unfair,” Eames protested immediately, because it was always the chemists, and Arthur knew that, which was why he’d laid the caveat.

“No chemists,” Arthur repeated. “It’s an industry that leads to volatile relationships, Eames, that’s all I’m saying.” 

“Well,” Eames said, sounding bold, but looking out at the horizon line where the night was purple instead of black, just barely. “Didn’t you ever feel like we had a bit of something between _us_?” 

And there it was. Arthur took a breath, and measured the tension between them, tasted it in the air like a lizard. “Yes,” he said after a beat, and Eames didn’t whip his head around to look at him, didn’t sputter or choke in surprise. Arthur didn’t regret the lack of reaction, but he did feel adrift, unable to predict the next move. It wasn’t an entirely unwelcome sensation.

“So did I,” Eames said, sounding a little distant. Then, more direct: “Why didn’t you ever do anything?”

Arthur chuckled, pushed his thumb into the built-in cupholder in his folding chair. “Why didn’t _you_ ever do anything?”

Eames let out a reluctant hum. “Because I respected you enough not to entirely fuck up your work, I suppose.” 

Arthur lifted his eyebrows in the dark, though he doubted Eames could see it. “ _Thank_ you, Mr. Eames.” That did make the other man smile, Arthur could just make out the curve of his mouth in the light filtering through the kitchen window. The silence stretched. A coyote yipped a song in the direction of the empty lot, signaling prey to its pack. “I suppose,” Arthur says at length, “A personal life just felt like so much… work.” He recognized how unsatisfying an explanation that was; it still made him feel restless and unhappy with himself. 

“Dom was a lot,” Eames said, without the bitterness that Arthur would’ve expected from a statement like that. 

“Dom is a lot,” Arthur corrected him, and they both chuckled together. Arthur levered himself to standing, the fabric of the chair shifting against his pants in a fission of sound. 

Eames looked up at him, and tilted his head. “Do you still feel it?” Arthur could feel his stomach swoop out in the millisecond between that question and Eames’ next statement. “I do, but.”

“But what?” Arthur said quickly, and then felt his face heat immediately. Eames didn’t seem to think there was anything unusual about the demand, or its speed, though, and gave him an easy shrug. 

“It’s easy to say. It’s so much harder to… figure out what actions to put with those words?” It wasn’t even a come-on, the way he said it. Arthur could feel something in the air stretch. “The difference between saying you’re hungry and actually cooking.” 

Eames seemed to finally realize that Arthur had been standing for long enough that there must be some intention behind the gesture, so he rose as well, and did it in folding increments: legs, then elbows, then the rest of his body. The void of darkness that was Eames, the shape of him next to Arthur, a reassuring blackness. 

There was a moment of silence, and Arthur could picture himself putting his hand on Eames’ chest, the same as when Eames had last given him a confession in the darkness out here. But it would be a different touch, and Arthur felt stymied by that. He resisted the urge to cram his hands into his pockets, and flexed his fingers at his sides, just once, instead.

“I do too,” he said evenly, measuring himself in the words, feeling calm about them. What he felt less calm about was the way he could feel Eames _watching_ him. “You’ve gotten better at cooking since you got here.” 

A small, almost disbelieving laugh came out of Eames. “Jesus Christ, Arthur,” Eames said, and warmth swept through Arthur at that aggrieved, happy sound.

“What I’m saying is,” Arthur said, feeling more even-footed by the minute. “Just - think about it.” He wanted to say it again: _I do, too_. But he made himself stop at that, because if he didn’t leave, he was going to undermine himself, and Eames was still a solid, black shape in the purple-dark. 

***

Eames would be lying if he’d said he hadn’t thought about it, and now Ariadne was here, and the reality was upon them: Arthur had one sofa, and two guests. He may have surreptitiously checked the closet for an inflatable mattress. They ate dinner, and Eames kept an eye on the sofa. They drank a bottle of wine, and Eames kept an eye on the sofa. No one else was looking at the sofa. He was aware he was being an idiot. Maybe Arthur had a hammock? Maybe he could go sleep in the truck; the bed was big enough, and Eames had more than enough experience using it as a mobile camper on long road-trips. 

But it was only maybe 9 p.m. when Ariadne’s jaw started cracking with yawns, and she made smothered excuses about time zones and Arthur waved off her apologies. “We have all week,” he told her, and went to the bathroom to fetch a towel and a washcloth and a little spare toothbrush, because he was Arthur, forever the hospitable aunt. Eames hadn’t been given a toothbrush, he realized, taking far too long to wash out his wine glass in the kitchen.

Arthur hovered at the threshold of the hallway while Ariadne slipped into the bathroom, and tipped his head expectantly toward the bedroom, and then left Eames to clutch the dishrag.

Oh.

The wine glass was the driest thing in the desert by the time Eames was done with it, fastidiously wiping droplets off and placing it in the cabinet like he had some kind of compulsion disorder. Arthur was already down to a t-shirt and pajama bottoms by the time he got there, looking at something on his laptop, at the desk, and Eames cleared his throat, like he needed instructions on how to function in a room he’d been in a dozen times before. 

“If you’re sharing a bed,” Eames began, closing the door behind them so as not to alarm Ariadne with their topic. “She’s _much_ smaller than I am.” 

“I know,” Arthur said. “That’s why I’m giving her the sofa. You don’t fit on it.” 

“The sofa’s comfortable,” Eames protested.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t comfortable, I said you didn’t _fit_ ,” Arthur said, arching an eyebrow over his laptop screen. “It already makes me feel like a bad host, watching you twist yourself up in knots on that thing. This just makes sense.”

Eames supposed it did. He noticed Arthur had moved his travel bag into the room, on one particular side, so Eames guessed that was his designated corner for now, and plucked a few articles of clothing out of it. He’d been Arthur’s guest for so long now, he realized, that it seemed almost ridiculous that he kept his things in this bag.

Eames slipped back out of Arthur’s bedroom, took his turn in the bathroom to change and brush his teeth, and looked at his face in the mirror. It was quiet in the living room. Arthur had plants on the ledge next to the shower, big thick-leaved jungly things with striped leaves. Eames was tan, his hair was a little long on top, he had tiny pale marks in the outside corners of his eyes that traced his smile lines. The tile was cool underfoot.

Ariadne was waiting for him when he came out, holding a glass of water, and patted him on the arm. “Thank you for letting me take your bed,” she said, so gracious and straight-faced, and Eames legitimately didn’t know if she was teasing him or not. Another cracking yawn interrupted his skepticism, and she waved an apologetic hand in front of her face. “Sorry.”

“Go to sleep,” he told her with a grin, a wash of fondness that was, frankly, unexpected. “Arthur and I will be fine.”

She hummed at him, and disappeared into the darkness toward the living room, and Eames took a moment to re-center himself. The strip of lamplight under Arthur’s door was intimidating, compared to the cool dark of the rest of the house. 

He padded back into the bedroom and dropped his clothing onto his bag, settling on the bed. Their usual nighttime routine, Eames reading one of Arthur’s many dog-eared novels while Arthur pattered away on his computer, seemed just as achievable in the bedroom. And if he’d overheard Ariadne’s apology in the hallway, Arthur made no mention of it.

Eames got about thirty pages in before he set the book down, and Arthur looked up at him, curious. 

“Arthur,” Eames said. “Have I outstayed my welcome?” 

Arthur’s brow furrowed slightly. “Inviting you to sleep in my bed is technically a level-up on the whole house guest intimacy scale, Eames.”

Eames remembered Arthur’s hasty reassurance of Ariadne’s delaying her trip, but. “That’s not answering the question.” 

“No,” Arthur said, and Eames wasn’t sure if that was a “No, you’re right,” or a “No, you haven’t outstayed your welcome,” and resisted the urge to throw his book at Arthur.

Instead, he picked it back up again, and looked down at the pages. After about five long breaths, Arthur started typing again. Eames read the page again, and then a third time, not absorbing the information at all.

Arthur stopped typing.

“I like having you here,” Arthur said quietly. “I hope you’ll stay as long as you like.” 

Eames closed his eyes for a moment and let out a silent breath. When he opened them, he closed the book, and looked up at Arthur. “Thank you.” Arthur was looking back, and the moment stretched, a prickle rising on the back of Eames’ neck, some ancestral vulnerability warning telling him to protect his soft pale underbelly. He watched Arthur swallow, and break his gaze, looking balefully at the laptop screen before closing it. 

They didn’t require any language to go about the motions of preparing for sleep: Eames took the cue to put his book aside and shut off his bedside light, Arthur adjusted the window coverings to accommodate for the sunrise and slid into the bedding beside him. There was a stripe of moonlight on the floor.

Eames sunk further down the bed, out of his reading angle, and tried to decide how to position his body. There had only been one option, on the couch. He rolled onto his side, drew breath to speak, and watched Arthur from across their own personal desert.

“Goodnight,” Arthur offered, curling his fingers around the edge of his own pillow.

Eames felt strangely punched out, but it lacked the panic that it had in the past. “Goodnight,” he said, and if Arthur noticed the hint of wonder in his voice, he was merciful enough not to remark on it.

***

With Ariadne’s arrival came Arthur’s proclamation that they would go up the mountain: something that Arthur and Ariadne had done before, and Arthur had faith that bringing Eames would only increase their relative peril mildly, if at all. In the weeks that Eames had been staying with him, his respect for personal danger had generally improved, anyway, to the extent that Arthur at least trusted that he wouldn’t go skittering off a trail in pursuit of wildlife.

What he hadn’t been anticipating was Eames dropping the tailgate on his truck bed to invite Lemon to come with them, who had taken the trip up the winding mountain road like a champ, and then stood at the trailhead unleashed like she knew exactly what she was doing.

“You didn’t tell me you got a dog,” Ariadne accused him, and Arthur glowered at the animal’s back.

“I didn’t,” he insisted, but you’d never know it from the way Eames tracked her with his eyes, happy as a clam, calling her to his side and telling her to _sit, stay_ whenever they were in danger of passing another group of hikers. 

Arthur shouldn’t have been surprised by the fact that Eames had somehow, via cultural osmosis, figured out what the etiquette for trail hiking with a dog was, despite never having done it, as far as he knew. But when they came out in to an open meadow where Arthur usually broke for lunch, he still took his turn throwing a hefty stick for her when Eames invited him to help out, and Ariadne shielded her eyes and watched them both, grinning and saying nothing, in that way that Arthur thought was extremely loud. 

Once they’d tired Lemon out, Eames threw himself down on their raggedy picnic blanket like he’d never worked so hard in his life - including pick-axing a drainage ditch - and devoured a sandwich and a half. 

“You should ask the owner if you can keep her,” Ariadne said, like they were picking up a conversation Arthur hadn’t heard the first half of, and Eames shrugged, smiling as he watched Lemon bound around in the water, snapping at the reflection of the sun on the surface. “Maybe. But this works, too.” 

Arthur found himself listening hard to that reply, turning it over and over in his hands as he chewed his ham and swiss. He tried to poke mental holes in it, or find where Eames might be covering up for some discontent - like maybe worrying that Arthur wouldn’t like a dog in the house. It only occurred to him secondarily to wonder whether he did, in fact, want a dog in the house.

Maybe Lemon was proof that things could work in more than one way, though. Maybe Lemon could belong to his neighbor and belong to Eames at the same time, the way that Arthur was aware of his attraction to Eames as separate from his hospitality to Eames as a house guest, and as a friend who had come to him for help. 

He realized, with a little bit of a guilty lurch, that Ariadne was looking at him. “You’re thinking too hard,” she decided, and tossed him the sunblock. “Time for another round of that.”

Eames was watching him from over Ariadne’s shoulder, a stillness in his face that Arthur found utterly frustrating. “You’re doing the frowny thing,” Eames said helpfully, making an arched gesture with his pointer finger in Arthur’s vague direction.

“Thanks,” Arthur muttered, and busied himself with the sunscreen, ignoring the heat in his face as the dog came back to Eames to shake proudly all over them, inciting a shout from his friends and fatalistic silence from Arthur. 

Before they started back down the trail, Arthur paused for a moment to stretch his back, and Ariadne was trying to take a selfie with Lemon, and Eames stopped and propped his hands on his hips and started up at the mountain range, stretching ever-onward above them, despite how far they’d come. 

“I heard someone in town say something about how the mountain calls you,” Eames said, without a hint of irony in his voice. “And if people leave, it’s because the mountain rejected you.”

“Hm,” Arthur said, skeptical and obvious about it. 

Eames grinned at him, and then clapped him on the back. “It’s got some poetry to it, though, doesn’t it?” 

“Eames is into New Age bullshit,” Ariadne declared, sounding younger than she even had 10 years ago, with a tattle-tale song in her voice. 

“I am open to all pathways of assistance from the universe,” Eames declared, but before he put his sunglasses back on, he gave Arthur a wink, and offered to carry the blanket. 

***

Ariadne spent the next day in the garden with Eames, admiring his tomato flowers and twisting a sprig of lavender to hold up to her face, helping him check for pests and generally doing what she was told. Ariadne was an eager student in all things, Eames found himself reminded. A good listener who knew when to scrutinize, and she wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty.

Eames had made the mistake of planting all of his bush beans at once, which meant they were all promptly coming in simultaneously, so an extra set of hands to assist with his early harvest was immensely helpful. Next year, he’d caught himself thinking, he would stagger the sowing two weeks at time, and then found himself utterly horrified by the presumption, so much so that Ariadne had asked if he needed to stop for some water.

But instead, Eames had recovered himself, and they’d settled onto some warm flagstones to snap the beans and clean them, methodical work that Eames appreciated. 

“The altitude gives me crazy dreams,” Ariadne said, making way for a flat black beetle by shifting her foot before its exploratory front legs could encounter her. “Like, absolutely vivid, the closest I ever get to time in the PASIV. I always forget until my first night here.”

Eames made a curious sound at her - he’d had almost aggressively dreamless sleep during his acclimation process, and it made him wonder about brain chemistry. “Do you still build?” he asked her. “I mean, do you still take work?” 

She shrugged, a gesture that reminded Eames deeply of Arthur in its ease and unselfconsciousness, and paused in her bean snapping. “I mostly consult now. There’s been some really interesting developments in the use of the dreamspace for therapy, especially in post-traumatic stress. But if doctors want to measure that, it needs to be done ethically.” 

Something Eames hadn’t even realized was tight in his chest loosened, and he gave her a broad grin - one that took her off guard, apparently. “What!” she demanded, and he shook his head.

“Nothing,” Eames said, and then immediately reverted. “You’re very smart, Ariadne. I wish you’d come along to us earlier.”

She threw a bean stem at him. “I would’ve been a teenager. Anyway, wasn’t your whole thing always about getting _around_ ethics?” 

“You wound me,” Eames said automatically, before the memory of Arthur saying _I like that you’ve been honest_ slipped through his mind, and he found himself bare before it. “But suppose that’s what I mean.” He tipped a hand toward the house. “Arthur went through all the formal training, there was no module on conscientious crime, I can tell you that.” 

Ariadne propped both of her elbows on her knees and dusted her hands off. “You don’t need training to know when something’s morally wrong, Eames. You know more than two-thirds of PASIV dreamers who get into the work as a teenager are likely to need cognitive therapy later? It’s all that - undeveloped prefrontal cortex stuff.” 

Eames gave her a long squint, trying to figure out if she was being ironic by asking him, and then realized she probably had no idea how old he’d been when he started. 

“I didn’t know that,” he admitted, because it was true, and then went back to work cleaning his vegetables. “But it doesn’t surprise me.” 

***

A few nights later, Arthur woke in the middle of the night, and wasn’t sure why.

He was generally a fairly sound sleeper, especially lately - he’d gotten used to the deep quiet of sleeping in the desert, punctuated by its shocking loudness. Thunderstorms in the summer could be drastic affairs. 

But tonight, there was really nothing - except that Eames was gone from the side of the bed where he should be, and the mattress was cold. Arthur checked for light coming from under the door, but the house was dark and quiet, punctuated by Ariadne’s even breathing in the living room.

After waiting a polite span of time to make sure that Eames wasn’t in the bathroom, he pulled on his tennis shoes and a sweatshirt with his boxers and crept out the back door into the yard - it was the least likely to wake Ariadne, and he really didn’t want to alarm her unless Eames was in serious trouble. He crunched quietly around to the garden, trying to avoid any noisy spots in the gravel, and let his eyes adjust to the moonlight, but the raised beds were unaccompanied by Eames’ familiar bulky shadow.

Fine: around the side again, to the front yard. Eames’ truck was there, which was a good sign, and he found the man seated in one of the red chairs, pulled out from under the _portal_ , so that he could look up into the sky.

“Sorry,” Eames whispered immediately, as Arthur came over and put a hand on his shoulder, and reached up to touch the back of it in a quick, fleeting contact. 

“Are you okay?” Arthur asked, trying to keep the drastic confusion out of his voice. And to stay quiet, because sound traveled well out here, and this moment felt insulated and entirely their own, despite being outside and completely exposed. 

Eames nodded, and then gestured up at the sky. “I got up for water and they were just - so bright.” He twisted a little to look at Arthur. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” 

Arthur shook his head, dismissing the apology, aware that his hand was still on Eames. The other man went back to looking at the sky, and Arthur looked with him, until a thought occurred to him. “Have you done this before?” Maybe he’d just never been aware, Eames waking up in the middle of the night, letting himself outside to gaze upward into the darkness. There was no moon tonight, which did make everything seem that much more dazzling.

He could feel a slight shake of laughter under his hand, and Eames said, “Yes. Darling, haven’t you?” And for the life of him, Arthur couldn’t imagine why he didn’t more often. 

Living out here, there were inevitably moments when he was arrested by the sky: getting out of the car after dinner in town, and finding his feet stilling before he got to the house, so he could stare upward. Perhaps, admittedly, one or two nights when he’d been intoxicated and decided it would be brilliant to lay on the ground and stare at the sky, until the world’s multitude of crawling insects came to explore him. 

They stared upward, Arthur’s neck going loose as he tipped his chin up, the heat of the day long gone from the stucco, and enjoyed the thrill of his legs getting a little chilly. He could feel his eyes blurring with the intensity of it, like if he could just focus for a moment longer, he could see more stars, more of the Milky Way. But his poor human eyes could only do so much, and he had to be content with the dazzling display in front of him, and that the limitations were within him.

“It’s beautiful,” Eames whispered, and Arthur felt a swell of pride as though he himself had hung the sky. 

***

Ariadne demanded Eames’ company on the last day of her trip, and dragged him into the town plaza to purchase art and souvenirs to hand out to, Eames assumed, friends and family. Arthur _conveniently_ had to go see about supervising a materials drop-off for some solar work he was planning to install next week, but it wasn’t as though Eames minded a bit of shopping. 

“Jewelry just seems brighter here,” Ariadne insisted, showing off the new flash of a silver cuff around her wrist. 

“That’s the altitude talking,” Eames joked, as they made their way around the arcade. Ariadne stopped for pottery and ristras, jars of salsa with warning labels on them and small bottles of liquor from the microdistillery one town over. 

Eames found himself hesitating over a selection of cut flowers, and then abandoned them to go pick through $1 paperback books on a trolley cart. Arthur’s library seemed to have a fondness for pulpy crime; Eames suspected he found their predictability comforting.

“Eames!” Ariadne called for him, waving him over, and he thumbed some bills out of his pocket and handed them over, settling a fistful of books into the bag he was carrying, before picking his way through the crowd to her.

“Look,” she said, delighted, and handed him a round, high-walled bowl made of some dense clay, painted in cheerful lemons against a sharp white background. When Eames flipped it over, there was a rubber ring adhered to the bottom to keep it from skidding. “For Lemon!” she added, unnecessarily.

“Aren’t you clever,” he said to Ariadne, turning it over and over in his hands, trying to find some reason not to buy it. It was well made and reasonably priced, it was thoughtful and useful - they always kept water out for the dog, after all, or any other dog who might wander by in need of a drink. If Eames put water out for the bees in the garden, surely Lemon deserved her own bowl? 

His pause seemed to be just long enough that Ariadne took it out of his hands and showed it to the seller. “We’ll take this,” she said, which was at least enough to get Eames moving, pulling his wallet out before he and Ariadne could get into a debate over who would pay.

“Thank you,” he said to her, as he settled up with the vendor and added the bowl to his bag, and she slipped an arm around his waist to guide him away.

“Let’s go to the wine shop,” she decided, and then added, “I just want you to know how weird it is to see you carrying around that little reusable tote and wearing holey shirts like you’re some kind of dusty old man.” 

Eames paused at that, considering the reality. “I mean,” he started.

“I know,” she laughed out. “But I met you wearing suits.” 

“I’m a master of disguise,” he told her with a grin. “Anyway, the suits are still there. For when I need them.”

Ariadne scrunched her arm around his waist and then let him go. “But you don’t mind being called old?” 

Eames considered that - considered the grey in his stubble, the lines around his eyes. But also the other shifts, too, the mental ones. Shifting paths to contentment. “I don’t mind being called old,” he told her. “But I’m not sure I’ve earned it yet.” 

She gave him a look, and he paused to open the door to the wine shop for her, and Eames flashed her an easy smile. “I never thought I’d live this long,” he told her, pitching his voice into honesty as they moved into a dimmer space.

“Ah,” she said, and patted his arm. “Surprise.”

***

Ariadne tried to insist that Arthur didn’t have to wake up at the crack of dawn to see her off, but it wasn’t an option, in his mind. The drive to the airport was three hours minimum, and he was determined to at least put a cup of coffee in her hand and a banana muffin in her bag. 

The mountain air had a sharp smell early in the morning, the residual chill of nighttime burning off slowly. Ariadne sat in the driver’s seat of her rented SUV, the motor off, and Arthur put one forearm on the open window and regarded her.

“Just say it,” he told her, rubbing his hand through his hair. “You’ve spent a whole week not saying it.”

“I’ve spent a whole week wading through the miasma of whatever is going on here,” she countered, no heat in her voice. She had a little paper bag of green beans on the seat next to her, a piece of Eames’ garden ready to accompany her home. 

“Okay,” Arthur says. “Is that it?”

“No,” says Ariadne, and that was what Arthur got for giving her a window. He’d allotted an extra fifteen minutes into her departure time for this, and she was proving his caution correct. “Arthur,” she said, and he swallowed at the care in her tone, the lack of scolding. “You’re alone out here.”

“I’m not - disconnected,” he protested, because it was an important distinction to him. 

“You have a community,” she conceded. “But you’ve been out here for, what - six years? And you’re not _close_ with anyone.” He opened his mouth to protest, and she course corrected: “Not close with anyone _here_ , Arthur.” 

He very, very intentionally didn’t look toward the house, didn’t wonder if Eames had somehow woken or heard them or was listening from right inside the front door. There was a blazing pink coming up over the mountains, the sun ready to vault itself into the sky.

“He came here for help,” Arthur said after a moment, and Ariadne’s expression softened.

“And I love that you want to help him,” Ariadne said, and put her hand on his forearm. “But he gets to be the one to decide what that means. Not you.”

“I know,” Arthur protested, aggravated by the knowledge, by her rightness. 

“And anyway, you can’t tell me that sleeping in the same bed with him hasn’t - ” she started, and Arthur interrupted her with, “Ariadne,” firm but also pleading.

“You’re not even surprised,” she accused him, a thread of annoyance in her voice.

“We’ve - discussed it.” Arthur withdrew his limbs from the vehicle and stuck his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie. 

She gave him a long look. “Then you need to discuss it again.” That seemed to be the final word on the matter: she put the key in the ignition and turned the engine. “Anyway, I’ll see you at Christmas?” 

“Of course,” Arthur said automatically, because it was a tradition he’d come to enjoy, however much Washington DC wasn’t particularly scenic in December. 

“Bring the dog,” Ariadne said as she put the car in reverse, and Arthur sighed at her, stepping back from the window, as she grinned at him and waved.

***

Eames woke alone the morning Ariadne left, and spent a few long moments staring at the ceiling of Arthur’s bedroom, enjoying the way the light filtered through his shades, the crispness of the bedding, before he realized the house was wholly empty. He would be lying to himself if there wasn’t some disappointment in his chest, some sense that maybe today - maybe after the week of hosting Ariadne and the distraction that had provided - the conversation they’d had before her arrival would culminate in some convenient meeting-of-eyes across the bed.

There was something both foolish and naive about that line of thinking, though: for one, Eames wasn’t remotely convinced that Arthur would care about having a house guest if he really wanted to pin Eames to the mattress. So the bed was empty, and Arthur was gone off to work, and Eames wasn’t nearly as irresistible as he thought he was. Well, that was fine.

Eames forced himself out of bed, padded barefoot through the living room and into the kitchen. The tidy emptiness of the couch mocked him, as did the absence of Arthur’s work boots by the front door. 

But after he’d made his coffee and carried it out to the front porch with a legal pad to make a proper grocery list, he found Lemon waiting for him. She was sunning her belly, prone on the concrete, a rapidly drying spatter of water around her bowl.

“Hello there,” Eames told her, and her tail thwapped against the surface, greeting him. He made it through his grocery list and the first few pages of a copy of the New Yorker, which Ariadne had brought for Arthur from the airport, before he said, “Oh for fuck sake,” and plodded inside to grab the house phone, carried it back outside to his chair on the _portal_ , and called Arthur.

Arthur picked up after the second ring, sounding perfectly unsurprised to have a call from Eames, and said, “Hello?”

Whatever Eames had been intending to say fell out of his mouth, and what came out instead was, “Hello - did Ariadne get along safely this morning?” 

“She did,” Arthur said, and Eames could hear things shifting on the other end of the line. “She said to give you her best.”

“Hmm,” Eames said, looking up at the sky, the few clouds that were drifting along, thin wisps. “Look, I was thinking. About the couch.”

Whatever sounds were on Arthur’s end stopped. “Oh?” Arthur asked. 

Eames tapped his pen on the legal pad, and looked at Lemon, who looked back, curious. He owed her a walk, probably, it had been a few days. “What if I just - didn’t sleep on the couch.” Eames swallowed after he said it, unable to stop his tapping, but Arthur’s reply was surprisingly prompt and even.

“That’s fine, but would you please hang up your clothes? Watching you live out of a bag for this long is getting under my skin like I can’t even tell you.” 

An abrupt laugh came out of Eames, and he tossed the pen onto the little table next to him, and rubbed his eyes. “Sure, Arthur. Of course.”

“The second drawer down in the dresser is cleared out,” Arthur said, and Eames felt his whole scalp prickle. “And there’s empty hangers in the closet. Oh, Eames?” The sound on the other end had picked up again, and Eames was pretty sure now it was Arthur picking through a nail bucket, likely trying to sort out some longer or shorter nails for a particular task. It was a menial job Eames had done many times, and enjoyed.

“Yes,” Eames said, beyond wondering what Arthur could possibly be adding as a postscript to that.

“Will you be for the fourth of July?” Arthur asked. “There’s a... barbecue we could go to, at the community garden.”

“Oh?” said Eames, taken off guard.

“Yeah, they do a whole thing.” Arthur hesitated on the other end. “There’s - whiffle ball?” he added, like it was some kind of sweetener.

“Oh my god,” Eames said, and covered his mouth with his palm for a brief moment before removing it. “Yes, Arthur. I’ll be here for July.” 

The fact that he left the date off entirely didn’t occur to him until Arthur was saying. “Oh - okay then.” His brain scrambled for something intelligent to add, to explain why he wanted to stay in the bedroom, in Arthur’s bed, to explain why he hadn’t unpacked his bags. 

“Eames, I have to go teach some college students how to run a buzzsaw,” Arthur said, which was, practically speaking, a wonderful way to realign the conversation. “But can we talk about this when I get home?”

“Sure,” Eames said. “Be safe.” And then Arthur said goodbye, and he said goodbye, and hung up, and looked at Lemon. “What in god’s name am I doing,” he asked the dog, who tilted her head at him. “Come along, let’s have a walk.” 

***

Arthur made it home mid-afternoon, about three hours earlier than he’d planned, but still far later than he’d wanted to after talking to Eames. This, he was aware, was exactly what would make Ariadne smug, and he hated that, but not enough to avoid the path his feet were taking him down.

He settled a bag of groceries on the kitchen table, looked around the shockingly clean house, and made himself put the dairy in the fridge before he searched for Eames - who was, of all things, napping on the couch. Arthur made it all the way into the bedroom and back out again before he realized where the man was, and then became baffled and charmed that he hadn’t woken him when he came in.

Eames was awake now, though, looking badly caught and rumpled, half propped up on one elbow as Arthur settled onto an ottoman and regarded him. “You’re home early,” Eames accused him, palming his eyes and struggling upward. Arthur wondered if it was adrenaline; if it was him, it would’ve been.

“I was a little distracted,” Arthur said, voice mild, as Eames roughed a palm over his own stubble and made some general grunting sounds, trying to get his brain back online. “What did you do in here, stress clean?” 

“Maybe,” Eames said, and propped his elbows on his knees, letting his hands dangle free between them. “And then stress napped,” he said, agreement by addition. 

“Well,” Arthur said, trying not to smile and failing completely. “You didn’t have to. But it looks great.” And the bag on the floor in the bedroom was gone, he’d noticed that on his first pass. 

“Why were you distracted?” Eames asked him, and there was an openness in his eyes that Arthur wondered if he’d been missing during those chats in the darkness in the scrub. Did he always look like that, so clear and vulnerable? It had been muted by the moon.

Arthur cracked the knuckles on his second and third finger, a compulsive habit from childhood that had crept back into his life since he’d left dream sharing. “I couldn’t stop thinking about kissing you,” he admitted, and Eames’ eyebrows lifted. “I mean, look,” Arthur said, a little defensive. “You’re the one who called about the bed.” 

“I called about the couch,” Eames corrected him, clearly stalling.

“You called about the _bed_ ,” Arthur insisted, and held out one of his palms. After a moment, Eames put his hand in it, and Arthur pushed his thumb along the line of Eames’ knuckles, in much better shape than when he’d had to treat them. 

“So why, ah,” Eames said. “Aren’t you kissing me?” 

Arthur did actually have an answer for that, which he tried to deliver as neutrally as possible. “Because the last time I confronted you on something you ran away for three days.”

“I came _back_ ,” Eames protested, and Arthur tugged him forward just enough to kiss him.

His whole plan had been to test the waters gradually, to kiss Eames and then back off, and to have an actual conversation about the whole thing. About what, exactly, Eames wanted, because you didn’t invite yourself to sleep in someone’s bed unless you wanted _something_ , but Arthur wasn’t about to make a world’s worth of assumptions out of one request. 

The trouble was, Eames seemed to have a trajectory entirely of his own: as soon as his mouth touched Arthur’s, he backed off the millimeter required to mutter, “Jesus god,” and then put both of his hands to Arthur’s face to angle him a bit, and licked directly into his mouth. 

Arthur’s moan startled even himself, arousal cascading from his chest to his belly as he lurched forward to try and get closer, and Eames was still pulling on him. He abandoned the ottoman with no small amount of clumsiness, ending up on the couch in a pile next to Eames without breaking the rhythmic press and drag of their mouths, and there was one whole corner of his brain obsessed with getting his fingers against the week-old beard on Eames’ jaw. 

Sharing a space with Eames for so long had marginally normalized Arthur to the scent of the other man, but the _taste_ of him was something else entirely. He found himself chasing it, back into the heat of Eames’ mouth, while Eames gripped the back of his neck with a broad palm and Arthur’s knee with the other, a new kind of contact that startled him out of their kiss for a moment. 

“Okay,” Eames asked, squeezing Arthur’s thigh right above the knee, and Arthur said, “Yeah,” and dove back in on him, swallowing a laugh out of Eames’ mouth. Arthur had expected to feel more frantic, but instead it felt like he couldn’t focus: other than kissing Eames, there were too many places he wanted to touch, and he found his hands roaming. Down the man’s chest and back up again, a gentle stroke of thumbs up his throat, until Eames let out some kind of _sound_ and hauled Arthur entirely onto his lap in a straddle.

A shaky breath came out of Eames as he looked up at Arthur, and Arthur pushed his hair back in a nervous shove, measuring Eames for that distant look he got sometimes. He felt jittery, full of half-certainties, and pressed both of his palms against his own thighs to calm himself down. 

“You can - put your hands,” Arthur said, and swallowed, “Wherever you want. It’s - fine. It’s good.” 

“Jesus, okay,” Eames said, and scooped both of his palms along Arthur’s back, and tipped him down again for another kiss that Arthur _happily_ took. Slower this time, and shorter. Almost like he could tease them both with it, but there was learning in that kind of kissing, too. Arthur had thought about this before today, about what Eames’ plush mouth would feel like, but the reality was infinitely better. 

He lingered there, slowly drugging himself on Eames’ mouth, while the man stroked hands over his back and down his thighs. One palm seemed content to clamp along Arthur’s leg in an anchoring grip that should _not_ be turning Arthur on as much as it was, but he really wasn’t complaining. 

Besides, there was Eames’ jaw to explore - breaking away from his mouth was hard enough, but he tipped his face up and Arthur needed to nuzzle in. Eames let his head fall against the back of the couch, and Arthur took his time, working his mouth along the thick cord of Eames’ throat until he hit the collar of his t-shirt. And there he stayed, dragging the bridge of his nose up against that stubble while Eames cursed quietly and got a hand under his shirt. 

Arthur paused, trying to assess what the fuck to do with himself, and Eames got fingers into his hair and pulled his head back up, mouth slack in a way that made Arthur want to push a thumb between his lips. “Arthur,” Eames said, some kind of warning.

Arthur said, “Hm.” Eames’ hand went loose in his hair, slid down to his ass, and pulled him forward until they were flush.

A sound punched out of Arthur when they settled body to body, well aware that his face probably looked slapped with it. Eames had rolled up into him, this instinctive movement that Arthur could see him visibly rein in, a short breath coming out of him as they both settled and Arthur was _so turned on_ it was painful. Like his body had just been waiting for that first contact to really harden up his dick in the worst possible way, and Eames was - clearly not lagging behind.

Arthur shifted against him experimentally, equal measures infinitely curious and wanting to savor this moment, because he could never have this again, this first moment of unwrapping Eames. 

“Okay well that’s not - am I supposed to want to _stop_ ,” Arthur blustered out, and Eames laughed, giddy with it, and pulled him down again, groaning into his mouth as their bodies settled and adjusted and _pressed_. Eames was a heavy bulk between his thighs, thick and present in a way Arthur had really, really avoided thinking about for as long as possible. 

“I don’t want you to stop,” Eames fed into his mouth, and there were hands under his shirt again, tugging at the cloth. “Let me see you.” 

Together they scrabbled Arthur’s shirt off, and Eames had to curl himself forward into Arthur’s chest to get his own - which would have been fine, but it was hard to get the clothing over his head when he kept mouthing at Arthur’s collarbone, and Arthur wanted to sob from it. 

Arthur had sawdust hiding in the folds of his clothes and was covered in a film of old sunscreen, and sweat from half a day’s labor, but Eames didn’t seem to care. Arthur had the wild urge to shove Eames back against the couch and slide off his lap and blow him, just to cut his own tension, and funneled that frustration into a sound in Eames’ mouth instead. 

He got Eames’ thumb against his nipple for his trouble, and Arthur curved himself into the touch, dragging teeth into Eames’ bottom lip until the man was laughing out an, “Ow!” and grinning at Arthur with a little reassessment in his gaze. 

“You _have_ seen me before,” Arthur mentioned, the thought occurring to him belatedly, but there was something intoxicating about being watched by Eames, half undressed, dizzyingly hard. That thumb against his nipple was in no hurry, and Arthur felt his hips shift. 

“It’s different like this,” Eames insisted, voice rough with it, and it was. Arthur knew. He’d seen most of Eames - there were a few new tattoos, which he tracked with his fingers, and sighed out a breath, just letting Eames touch him. And then there was the stack of Eames’ abs, which Arthur had _always_ wanted to get his mouth on, and he spread his palms over them with a little bit of embarrassing reverence. 

“Yeah?” Eames asked, cataloging reactions almost aggressively as Arthur was, and Arthur shot him a guilty look and made a soft sound as he skimmed his touch lower. “Ah,” Eames gusted out, stomach jumping under his touch, and Arthur kissed him again, wanting those sounds _directly_ in his mouth. 

“Can I - “Arthur started, fingertips slipping along Eames’ waistband, and Eames had the word, “Yeah,” out before he could finish, sending another thrill up Arthur’s spine. 

Arthur pushed at the button on Eames’ fly and dragged at the zipper, knuckles brushing along the hard line of Eames’ cock in his underpants on his way back up, and the sound Eames made was undefinable, foreign, and Arthur wanted to hear it again. He twisted his hand to cup along the hard length of Eames between them, working him through the fabric, and Eames roughed out, “Fuck, Arthur, would you _please_ ,” before Arthur lapped into his mouth again.

But begging wasn’t the goal, either, so: he peeled Eames’ underwear back with his free hand and reached for his cock with the other, the shock of skin against his palm sending a jolt through his groin. Arthur moaned a beat behind Eames and a half-pitch above him, giddy with the reality of stroking Eames’ erection slow and easy with his very own hand. 

“I want you to show me how you like it,” Arthur told him, and Eames’ hands convulsed on him, settling on his ass in an almost desperate grip. 

“Arthur,” Eames managed to get out, and his eyes cut down between them, watching Arthur ring fingers round him and pull, slow. “We’re not going to quite have - time for that.” 

“Fuck,” said Arthur, and Eames dragged him down into a messy kiss, hands unlatching from Arthur’s ass to paw at the front of his pants. This was fine, Arthur thought, this was weirdly right. The middle of the afternoon on a weekday, sweat creeping down the back of his neck from the summer heat, practically hyperventilating with desire to get their hands on each other. 

The sound that ripped out of him when Eames got Arthur’s dick out wasn’t entirely human. Arthur hadn’t been prepared at all, not for the reality of that hot hand around him, the complete newness of touch from this man he’d wanted for _so long_. And now wasn’t the time to think about that, the _years_ of wanting, not when he had Eames keening into his mouth and stroking him, but Jesus. 

“You’re so - “ Eames started, but he seemed to be having trouble stringing words together. Arthur settled his forehead against Eames’, and brushed their noses together before he gave the man a shorter kiss. 

“It’s okay,” Arthur said. “Look.” And they both did, and Arthur groaned at the sight of it, their hands on each other, the shocking blush of Eames’ cock in his fist, and by all rights, this should _not_ be working for them. This was barely more than a dry grind skin to skin, and somehow Eames was precariously close to orgasm. “Watch,” he prompted Eames again, listening to him pant. Arthur spit into his palm, and when he touched Eames again, the man bucked underneath him.

Arthur felt dizzy with it, just that little bit of added slick as he worked a thumb against the crown of Eames’ length, and Eames jolted, and bit his bottom lip, and came between them. “Oh my god,” Arthur said, absolutely stupid with arousal, and worked him through it, until Eames smeared his palm through the come on his stomach and gripped Arthur again. Arthur shouted over Eames’ shoulder and fucked into his hand, and Eames was murmuring his name against his ear and none of this was _fair_.

Arthur came hard enough that his eyes closed, hips convulsing forward as he curled over Eames, and the man’s other hand came up to his ribs to steady him. He took two, three breaths, realized he still had his hand around Eames’ cock, and made himself open his eyes. Eames was staring at him, looking absolutely wrecked, and Arthur let out a cracked sound and collapsed against him. 

“Oof,” Eames said, and wrapped one arm around Arthur, the other trapped between them, and turned his face into Arthur’s damp hair. They stayed like that for a moment, until Eames said, “Not my finest hour,” and Arthur laughed a giddy, disbelieving sound at him, because if that was true, Eames’ finest was probably going to kill him.

“I actually have like - lube, in the bedroom,” Arthur mentioned, a distant afterthought. 

“Oh, good,” Eames said, and kissed his temple. “It’s good to have goals.” And he held Arthur while Arthur shook with laughter, and eventually joined in.

***

It would be easy to assume that life would change significantly after breaking the seal between them, but in many ways, Eames felt, not much changed at all. Arthur went to work, Eames went to the garden, they made homemade pizza for dinner after What Happened On The Couch (Arthur’s nomenclature; Eames felt it sounded like a 60s horror movie), and Arthur fought him for the last piece. 

But it was like some invisible weight Eames had been carrying was dropped. The palpable dotted line down the middle of the bed vanished, and Eames woke up two nights in a row with Arthur curled toward him like a question mark, fingertips brushing Eames’ pillow. One morning, when Eames pried himself off the mattress, Arthur was in the bathroom shaving with the door open, an as-yet unobserved ritual. 

So Eames observed, but if Arthur’s swatting was any reaction, his presence wasn’t particularly helpful.

The point was: life went on fairly as it had been, with one small exception. Eames had said July, and he became suddenly, deeply aware of the other months after it. Of August, October, and January. He’d come in with the change of seasons, after all. 

He blamed the beekeepers. 

They were sisters, and they kept boxes at the community garden, and Eames ran into them one day when he was trading a last harvest of bush beans for some cilantro starts - he’d ruined his own, let them go to coriander far too fast, and Arthur seemed to have an affinity for cilantro that Eames had every intention of leveraging. 

They were scraping out honey supers over a large glass tureen, and Eames stopped to admire the play of sunlight in the liquid. “That’s beautiful work,” he told them, and got twin flashes of teeth in return. “Is it for purchase?” 

“Tell you what,” said the one doing the scraping, “Third week of August, that’s our big end of season harvest. We could use someone like you to hold the boxes, and we can pay in trade.”

They did look heavy, and Eames had been carrying literal bags of concrete mix for the past two months. But the mention of August was what gave him pause, curling into the back of his mind like the lingering smoke they’d used to drowse the hive. 

“Let me give you my number,” Eames said instead of demuring, and tapped the girl’s phone number into his mobile as she rattled it off aloud.

“You farm?” asked the other, while he selected a few bee emoji to send along with his number. “We’re always looking for new places to put our boxes. Next season, obviously, this year it would be too confusing for the bees.”

“Jesus,” Eames said, laughing out the word. He rubbed his hand over his head, his chest ringing with _next season_. “The bees aren’t the only ones. Sure, come have a look at the garden. I’ve got silvery lupine in, they seem to love it.” 

That got him an approving glance, and the sister hefting the supers set them down to check her sister’s phone. “See you around.”

“Sure,” Eames said, backing away from them with a grin. “You will.” He took his cilantro back to the truck and whistled for Lemon, who came tearing out of some middling rows of corn to jump into the cab. 

On the road back to Arthur’s, with town at his back and the mesa stretched out in front of him, Lemon stuck her head out the passenger side, and Eames let his hand coast the air through the window. The sky was textured with overbearing clouds, and the promise of an afternoon storm. 

***

Building adobe bricks was always a crowd pleaser, but Arthur found the work went faster alone. Part of that, of course, was not having to pause to educate new helpers every time, but there was also a personal rhythm to the work that was satisfying to him. So it was with a little begrudgery that he had to admit Eames’ presence was welcome - especially since he was a month later starting than he wanted to be.

“You’re just keeping me around for my upper body strength,” Eames accused him, and swung hard with a hoe to bite deep into the clay mix that Arthur was prodding on the ground.

“It needs more sand,” Arthur said, and tried not to think about Eames’ shoulders, because it was a long day, and they had work to do. 

Eames stooped to feel the mix himself, frowning, while Arthur poured bagged sand, added more water from a 10 gallon bucket, and took the hoe from Eames’ hands, slicing and pulling the soils together. “Like this,” Arthur said, when Eames bullied the gardening tool back from him. 

Once they had the mix to Arthur’s satisfaction, he crouched over a set of molds, working quickly to get the mix into the brick form and smoothed over. Eames knelt next to him, working with a scraper to get the sharp, 90-degree angles that Arthur expected. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you,” Eames asked, sweat curling down his throat and soaking into the neck of his t-shirt.

“You’re distracting,” Arthur said, which he realized was a conceivably ambiguous response, so he added, “But yes.” 

Eames seemed delighted by that, and Arthur huffed out a laugh, and showed him how to strike off the mold, leaving two solid adobe bricks behind. Arthur laid out more sand on the drying platform, and Eames dutifully transported wet bricks two by two, as Arthur filled the mold again and again. 

As Eames waited for Arthur to finish filling and leveling, Arthur found the awareness of being so intensely regarded less overwhelming than before. “I think I’m starting to understand why you wanted me to work with you,” Eames said, and Arthur was a little surprised by the lack of teasing in the statement, but he kept it off his face. Or he tried to, anyway.

“Oh?” Arthur asked, pausing to rub his upper arm across his cheek in a messy smear. 

Eames tipped his head at him, and his face was so open, Arthur had no fucking idea how he’d earned any of it. “You knew I’d be good at it,” Eames said, and Arthur arched an eyebrow at him. “But how did you know I’d _enjoy_ it.” 

Arthur shrugged, feeling a little caught out. There were plenty of more metaphorical reasons, ones that he’d pushed at himself earlier: Eames needed structure, he needed measurable progress. He needed to be able to leave work at the end of the day entirely, and come back to it the next. Creating things had always been their speciality, and Arthur had to admit that he’d always been just a little bit better when Eames was involved. But the simple truth was, giving Eames something he liked was maybe all that mattered.

“Because you like learning,” Arthur said, and Eames was watching him, waiting for more, and Arthur tilted his head to indicate that was really all. 

“Oh,” Eames said, eyebrows up, and then let out a short laugh. “Well. From a know-it-all like you, I mean, that’s quite a compliment.”

“Alright,” Arthur said, voice twisting wry. “Come on, we’re almost done.” 

Eames did as he was told, which was another thing that would never stop amazing Arthur, and he stopped to enjoy the sight of it for long enough that he lapsed their assembly rhythm, and had to scramble to catch up. 

***

Eames hadn’t quite gotten used to the fact that it could be so warm during the day, and so cool at night. Arthur had a whole system for opening up the house to draw in cooler air as soon as the sun went down, and they’d gone to sleep with the bedroom windows open as the overhead fan shushed its lazy comfort. 

It was sometime in the predawn when Eames woke up to Arthur curled entirely around him, and the bedding tangled around their feet, and he realized it was relatively _chilly_. His nose was cold. Arthur hummed at Eames’ roused motions, fitted closer to him, and Eames had the swooping realization that Arthur was hard against him, and likely entirely unaware. His brain went from half asleep to delighted and brightly awake, and he reached back to fetch Arthur’s arm and draw it up over his bare chest.

“Hm,” Arthur said against his neck, stretching against him, hips rolling, and Eames could feel the moment he went from fully asleep to _awake_.

“Darling,” Eames said, folding his arm over Arthur’s to keep him close, because this was new, and Arthur rabbiting off was the opposite of what he wanted.

“Uh,” Arthur said, which was maybe the least composed Eames had ever heard him. He went up onto one elbow, giving Eames enough room to roll his shoulders flat onto the bed, and he drew Arthur down into an easy kiss, full of heat. Arthur slung a leg between his, and Eames groaned at that press of hardness against his hip.

They’d done this, of course - they’d explored Arthur’s lube, which was predictably free from the desert’s interminable grit - Arthur shouting into his mouth as he came, Eames’ fingers inside him, mouth around his cock. Arthur had even woken him up once before, taken both of them in hand, and worked them to completion without saying anything, just that shockingly direct gaze in the dark that dried up Eames’ voice. 

So they’d been plenty busy, and it had only been a few days since What Happened On The Couch, but Eames still felt like he had every right to whine a little when he asked, “Aren’t you ever going to fuck me?” 

Arthur’s hand stilled in its lazy course down Eames’ ribs, and Eames went through a flash of heat as he could _feel_ that change in Arthur’s posture, like he was reordering things in his mind. And then that drifting hand was between his legs, cupping at him, and Eames cursed quietly and turned his face against Arthur’s shoulder.

“Do you _want_ me to fuck you?” Arthur asked, rolling his palm in easy, rhythm pressure.

“Ugh,” Eames said, and reached for Arthur’s sleeping pants. “Yes. I also want you to stop wearing clothing to bed.” 

“Oh really,” Arthur laughed out, while Eames worked the waistband over his hips. 

“Yes,” Eames confirmed. “You can’t possibly tell me you normally sleep in anything. In the _summer_. I certainly don’t.” It had been a bed sharing courtesy, and yet here Arthur lay, offensively clothed. 

“We’ll remedy that immediately,” Arthur said, and kissed him, and Eames groaned when Arthur worked a hand under his waistband to stroke him skin to skin. “Get these off,” Arthur said, and Eames’ scalp prickled with the next words. “And roll over.” 

Arthur pulled away to shed his own pants, and Eames could hear the wooden slide of the bedside drawer, Arthur pulling out lube and - “No condom,” Eames said, trying to throw it out there in a way that was half question, churning his own clothing off and propping himself up on his elbows.

“Yeah?” Arthur asked, and then looked over at him and said, “Jesus,” which Eames assumed had something to do with his ass and the way he was splayed out. 

“Unless there’s some need,” Eames amended. “But I enjoy the mess.” 

Arthur was swearing, very quietly, and Eames laughed at him - and got his hips pulled up sharply for his trouble. “Okay. Legs wider,” Arthur coached him, and Eames reset while Arthur trickled lube into the split of his ass, and stroked it against Eames’ skin with his fingertips. “I would’ve done this the first night, if I’d thought - ” Arthur cut himself off, pressing in, and Eames let his head drop to his forearm and groaned. 

“We were both - busy,” Eames said, exhaling slow while Arthur worked into him. “Gazing at each other.” He could feel the laughter behind him, and grinned. Arthur’s fingers were, at least, familiar, and he had a gaspingly efficient way of opening Eames up. Eames could feel his toes curling, and his forearm was positively humid with his own breath, and he hadn’t quite realized what a fugue state of arousal he’d fallen into until Arthur was literally biting the round of his ass.

“Oh my god,” Eames blustered out, and Arthur’s teeth retreated and were replaced by a chaste kiss. 

“It’s very - ” Arthur said. “There’s moonlight.” 

“I see,” Eames laughed, breathless with it, and pushed up onto his elbows enough to twist backward, looking at Arthur behind him. “You understand I’m going to need us to do this face to face.” 

Arthur arched an eyebrow at him, and then said, very seriously, “I guess you’d better turn over, then.” Eames groaned as Arthur pulled his fingers free, and tried to be a little less surprised by Arthur helping to bodily flip him. Arthur carried his strength differently than Eames, a fact for which Eames was more grateful with every passing day.

Eames propped a knee skyward and crunched up high enough to grab Arthur by his sides and drag him down into a graceless pile on top of him, all for the pleasure of kissing the man before they went any further. Arthur even had the good grace to linger, and didn’t seem to be put off his task at all once he levered himself back up to his knees, hissing as their erections skidded and Eames made a sound at the ceiling. 

“Just so I’m aware,” Arthur said, settling between Eames’ thighs. He pushed one leg up and out, and Eames helpfully grabbed onto it for him, spreading himself deliciously wide as Arthur slotted up against him. “Why?” 

His first instinct was to tell Arthur to fuck off, both for making him say it, and for asking at the same moment he edged the tip of himself against Eames’ ass and pressed in. That speechless pause, as Arthur slid into him by inches, gave Eames enough time to reconsider. “Because it’s our first time, and I want to kiss you,” he said, and something in his chest expanded at the sight of Arthur’s mouth curling up just on one side. “It doesn’t have to be every time. I’m sure you’d be a fright fucking me up the mattress on my hands and knees.”

“Into the wall,” Arthur agreed, having the grace to sound a little punched out as he settled deep into Eames’ body. “Maybe next time.”

“Great,” Eames said immediately, and hooked a calf around Arthur’s hip, grounding him just that extra bit closer, in a way that made him let out an _oh_ into the air, just needing to make sounds.

Arthur soothed a hand over his thigh, back and forth, and the half-smile turned into a frown. “You good?” 

“Very,” Eames confirmed, and reached between them to give his own neglected length a few encouraging strokes. He was _very_ hard, and Arthur seemed to like to watch him touch himself, if the magnetic track of his eyes was any indication. Yet another reason to do this face to face; Eames found himself greedy for Arthur’s reactions, and didn’t see that subsiding anytime soon. 

Arthur didn’t seem satisfied by that, pulled out halfway and uncapped the lube to drizzle some additional quantity onto his dick, and when he slid in again, the noise that came out of Eames was significantly more guttural. “Would you - ”

“I am,” Arthur said, and kissed him to shut him up, which was probably wise. He started up a pace that Eames would call _exploratory_ , and let that expanding thing in his chest keep on growing, warm and solid, weighing him into the mattress like a comfort. “Let me,” Arthur murmured into his mouth, while he drew back and rolled forward. “Take care of you.” 

Eames buried a soft sound between them, and let him. And that was easy for Arthur to say, wasn’t it, when he’d spent over a month cultivating trust and giving Eames whatever he fucking needed, before he’d even asked for it. But Eames actually just - giving everything up, physically? That was a plane that he hadn’t ventured toward in some time.

It was easier with Arthur, though. The way Arthur learned and studied, Eames was well acclimated to being _measured_ by Arthur. After a few moments of those gliding thrusts, Arthur pulled away from him, planting a hand on his folded knee to lever himself upward, and balanced a palm against Eames’ chest, keeping that anchored sensation solid. Eames felt watched, in the most delicious way, as Arthur spread his thighs to brace himself and tried out some shorter, sharper thrusts on Eames, ones that had Eames reaching above himself to brace against the wall and growl enthusiasm into the darkness. 

There was a shine on Arthur’s bottom lip that Eames couldn’t tear his eyes away from, and in a way, it helped stave off everything else. Arthur was, to no surprise of Eames’, far too good at fucking him, far too quickly. He made quiet, questioning sounds, tilting Eames’ hips up and asking for feedback in a way that Eames had never quite experienced before, like he was determined to learn how to do this _best_ in just one go.

So it was maybe a surprise, when Arthur pushed his hair back out of his face, and said, “Eames,” and Eames realized he was making soft sounds every time he exhaled, and had to find his tongue. He swallowed, and pressed his hand against Arthur’s chest to let him know he was listening. “Would you ride me?” Arthur asked, the same tone he used when he asked Eames to pass him limes from the fruit bowl, and Eames put the heels of his hands over his eyes to let that sink in.

“Yes, of course,” he said immediately, and pulled his hands away, Arthur slipping out of him so he could settle onto the mattress. Eames was after him like a shot, throwing a leg over his hip practically before Arthur got settled, and reaching back for Arthur’s cock made the man hiss. 

“And you look so composed,” Eames said kindly, lining them up so he could sink down again, and didn’t bother trying to stifle the sound in his throat at how different it felt like this. 

“Fuck,” Arthur said, briskly wrecked from it in a way that was _deeply_ flattering. Eames stayed upright for a moment, pulling Arthur’s hands to his thighs, and let his legs find an easy lift and drop rhythm. 

“Can you come like this?” Eames asked, curious, and the shine was on Arthur’s throat, now, and his chest. He reached down to wrap a hand around his cock, and watched Arthur swallow. Every little thing the man did caused some kind of fucking feedback loop of arousal in his guts, it was torture. 

Arthur’s hands clamped on his thighs, and moaned out a sound that was closer to yes than no, but definitely wasn’t a real word. Once he caught Eames’ rhythm, he seemed determined to participate, and started to lift his hips to meet Eames halfway in a motion that brought their bodies together in a delicious thud that Eames could feel deep in his body. 

Once his drops weren’t enough, Eames gave up on touching himself and settled both hands into the bedding by Arthur’s shoulders, and worked his ass backward at a clip that made Arthur shudder bodily. “Okay,” Eames panted out, and he couldn’t stop grinning, and staring, like his face wasn’t entirely under his own control anymore. 

Arthur managed to say, “Put,” and then grabbed Eames’ forearm, dragging his hand onto Arthur’s shoulder. Eames pressed down experimentally, eyebrows raising, and said, “Yeah?” Arthur moaned sharply, and his hips twisted in a way that made Eames buckle and say, “Fuck, okay Arthur, that’s hot.” Like it wasn’t all hot. He pinned Arthur at the shoulder, and levered up on one hand to get his other in place in the same spot, shoving the man into the mattress as he fucked himself backward. They were going to talk about this later, Eames needed information almost as much as he needed to see Arthur come. 

Eames swallowed, let his eyes go half-closed, and tried to measure how much more of Arthur’s dick he could _take_ before this was all over. And there must have been something of it on his face, because Arthur was reaching between them, wrapping a hand around him in a way that gusted a breath out of him hard. Arthur said, “Hold on,” and tipped his knees up, feet bracing in the bedding, and pushed into Eames with a solid, quick clap that made Eames’ body burn.

“Are you close?” Arthur asked, and it was shockingly intimate, considering the litmus of everything else they were doing. Eames nodded and hung on, determined to keep up this shoulder pinning thing now that he knew about it, and drove himself between Arthur’s fist and his dick, working his body in an easy slide. Cautious about it, he readjusted his press on Arthur’s body from the heel of his palm to the full lay of his forearm, watching the man’s face for _too much_ , but Arthur’s mouth just opened, instead, and Eames tipped himself down like that. Braced on his forearms, ass tipped up, and trapped entirely by Arthur, despite being the one pinning him down. There was some poetry there, he was sure, and he’d riddle it out when he wasn’t about to come all over Arthur.

It only took a few more moments of that frantic pace: Arthur dragged along his prostate and worked a thumb up under the head of his cock, Eames yelled into the space between his throat and his shoulder, and then he was gone, thighs burning as he tried to stay upright and spilled over Arthur’s fist. He could feel Arthur slowing in him, and dragged his face up enough to rough out the words, “Don’t stop.” 

Arthur’s eyes went just the slightest bit wider, and Eames grabbed both of his hands, mess and all, and pinned them into the bedding. Eames worked his ass backwards, despite the stimulation overload on his end - Arthur just kept grinding away at that perfect angle, but his fingers threaded with Eames’, and his eyes went unfocused. “There you go,” Eames murmured between them, and Arthur said, “Fuck, oh my god,” and arched under him, coming hard. Eames sank himself back, keeping Arthur deep, and they panted gracelessly in each other’s faces for long enough that Eames was grinning again.

“Oh my god,” Arthur said again, tone slightly different, as Eames carefully eased his weight off Arthur’s arms, enough for the man to get them free. They wrapped around Eames’ shoulders in a loose embrace, and Eames kissed his neck, lazy with it, beaming to himself, and he was really going to have to get control of his face before Arthur started to feel laughed at. 

“Yeah,” Eames agreed, and let himself sink, laying there. Arthur stroked his hair with his clean hand. They shifted enough that Arthur slipped free of him, and Eames groaned. He was nearly drifting when Arthur sighed and said, “You might like the mess, but that also means you’re committing to the clean-up, Eames,” which was just so Arthur that it made Eames belly-laugh, which was more than enough to rouse him again.

“Okay, fair,” Eames said, and kissed him, pushing himself up with a luxurious sound. “That was excellent,” he mentioned, dropping a kiss to Arthur’s throat, and chest, as he peeled backward. “Oh god, we’re sticky. Hang on, I’ll be a moment.”

Eames had fully intended to bring a washrag back to the bedroom, or something like that, but he’d barely wiped himself down before Arthur appeared in the bathroom, dim light from the moon cutting shadows of him in the doorway. Arthur joined him in the cleanup, water running cold from the tap, and somehow not nearly as put out by the mess as Eames had assumed he would be. “I was coming back,” Eames protested, and got pushed up against the sink and kissed. Arthur’s arms looped his hips, and Eames mirrored the pose, holding him close. “Arthur,” Eames said warningly, and Arthur hummed pleasantly against him. “Tell me we’re going back to bed. It’s far too early.” 

Arthur laughed, and kissed him again, and then pulled on his hand. “I know. Come on.”

When they settled back together, Eames curled himself around Arthur, luxuriating in permission to do so, the over-warm press of all those limbs, and the way Arthur practically snuggled back against him, a word that seemed so forbidden Eames almost didn’t dare to think it. He managed to fetch the sheet up over their hips, at least, and groaned pleasantly into the back of Arthur’s head, arm draped over him. And in the darkness, Arthur said, “I know talking about this after sex is stupid, but I really want you to stay.” 

Eames was surprised at how little that stirred him, at the lack of clench in his chest. He covered Arthur’s hand with his own, stroked his thumb along the cup of the man’s palm. “I’m staying,” he said easily, and felt Arthur press back into him, grip his fingers tight. 

“Okay,” Arthur said, very quietly, and Eames kissed the back of his neck, reveling in the scent of him there, as they drifted together. 

***

The monsoons, like so many other things about that summer, had taken Arthur by surprise. It was just a sign of him losing track of the weeks, really - but when the daily storms rolled in for their afternoon cloudburst, disappearing a mere hour after drenching them, Arthur had realized how late in the season it really was. The first time, Eames had been caught walking back from Arthur’s neighbor’s house, and had run pell-mell through the scrub for a solid five minutes while Arthur tried not to laugh at him from the back porch.

This afternoon, though, Arthur could smell it coming, and had pointed the line of rain haze out to Eames, and they watched the clouds roll in from the safety of the _portal_. Lemon supervised while Eames covered the tomatoes so they wouldn’t get bruised, and then Eames brought Arthur a Tecate. The three of them breathed relief at the way the rain cut the heat, Lemon staying alert but dry on the welcome mat. 

“We should check that place over by the waterfall,” Eames mentioned after working halfway through his beer, squinting into the distance. “That four-square adobe place we had to check the gutters on, I think there’s a low spot on the roof.”

“Probably,” Arthur said. “That sounds right. Tomorrow?” 

“Sure,” Eames said. He bent over his lap and dragged on the laces of his work boots, and then toed them off, groaning as he peeled off socks and stretched his feet. Arthur thought about a token protest, but it wasn’t worth it: Eames had his heels in Arthur’s lap before he could really say anything. 

Arthur let his hand rest on the arch of Eames’ foot and regarded him with annoyed fondness, the smell of soaked earth and dog and human filling him. The topic had been circling him for a few days, as soon as he’d realized the monsoon season had come, and the summer was on its inevitable decline. “I usually visit Ariadne for Christmas.” 

Eames turned from his easy regard of Lemon, and lifted his eyebrows at Arthur. “What, in - DC, right? Sounds awful, can I come?” 

“I was kind of hoping you would,” Arthur admitted, looking down at Eames’ toes. He pressed his thumb into the ball of Eames’ foot, and slid upward. 

“Count me in,” Eames said, and settled his bottle onto the concrete, lacing his fingers over his stomach to admire the sky. There was so much that he didn’t know yet, Arthur realized. About living here, about the other seasons. It wasn’t always an easy winter, and the fall and spring could be disappointingly short. And, Arthur had to admit to himself, he was maybe looking forward to watching Eames chop firewood. 

But all of that was in front of them, and the summer wasn’t over yet. Arthur wondered when they might have their next fraught conversation in the darkness by the fire pit, or when Eames might startle him with some new connection in town, like the community garden or the beekeepers, who had come by the house to see Eames’ garden just last week.

“You’re looking very contemplative, Arthur,” Eames said, without even looking at him, and Arthur felt _seen_ , felt held by that sense of being known. 

“I just - like this,” Arthur settled on, and admitting it out loud wasn’t hard, but he did still feel a little vulnerable, as he held Eames’ feet. 

Eames shifted his gaze, and gave him a lopsided grin, and then he poked Arthur in the ribs with his foot. “Me too.”


End file.
